Activism comes in many forms. I hope, in some small way, my writing is part of it
T
ime, it seems, is moving in strange ways for many of us. A colleague recently said, “mourning, reckoning and activism all seem to require different speeds,” and I’m grateful to her for that. I’ve often thought that the “gear-shift” between my paid work and the unpaid beautiful work of mothering feels like a rusty old manual car that I don’t quite understand how to drive. Lurch. Clunk. Add to that combination of work and parenting the immanent collapse of the world one was raised in, and there is a lot more grit than just clunky gears.
The thing is, the world isn’t changing: our illusions about “the west” are finally being pulled down, and with it, our perceptions of time.
When I was last able to visit the UK, where I lived for nearly 18 years, and which I consider (in confusing and complex ways) my home, one of my oldest and dearest poetry friends was in the midst of a family difficulty outside the scope of their usual experience. When Mick was 80, his sister, Quaker activist Gaie Delap, had been imprisoned for action against climate change. At the time of my visit, Mick and the rest of the family was in the midst of getting her case into the media as much as possible, because Gaie was supposed to have a tag fitted that allowed her to be in home detention, but for months, a tag could allegedly not be found.
