• last year
Makar Kathleen Jamie launches a "collection poem" from the people of Scotland to world leaders in response to the conflict in the Middle East and the climate crisis.
Transcript
00:00 [Music]
00:07 So these are hard times that we're living through, and I thought that as a national poet,
00:15 one small thing we could do is make a collective poem, an address from the people of Scotland to world leaders.
00:23 We'd like to do it as we've done before, by collecting in a single line from as many people as want to contribute,
00:30 and we'll fashion these into a poem, into an address that we can then send to world leaders.
00:37 Poetry provides a space and the integrity to speak truthfully and to speak from the heart,
00:42 which is something we're not hearing a lot of at the minute.
00:45 We're hearing a lot of division and a lot of rancour.
00:49 We know what the themes are - conflict, climate collapse, all of it.
00:55 We can speak to everything and say we can do better than this.
01:00 We're aware that a lot of people are hurting just now, a lot of people are despairing,
01:04 but we hope that just by making one small creative contribution, rather than a destructive contribution,
01:11 we can make a space for hope. Thank you.
01:15 [Music plays]

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