By Vicki Milliken
When Melbourne poet Amanda Anastasi, received an email asking whether she was willing to write and perform a poem for the planet’s biggest climate conference, COP30, she thought it was a prank. ‘I didn’t believe it,’ she says.
But the email from Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade wasn’t a prank.
Amanda had been invited to attend Oceania’s Global Ethical Stocktake (GES) – a think tank of political leaders, CEOs, economists, lawyers, indigenous voices and activists. Her brief; to absorb the ideas and spirit of the speaker’s contributions and write and perform a poem the same day.
‘I don’t normally work that way,’ Amanda tells The Westsider. ‘I usually take months to write a poem.’
‘My instructions were, it needs to be a call to action. It needs to acknowledge the urgency of the issue, and you need to talk about climate impacts in some way. It can’t be too depressing though. It needs to bring people together and give people a sense of hope.’ And it needed to be a poem that Amanda could be proud of. ‘That’s a lot to do in one poem,’ she says. ‘The whole time I was terrified – excited and terrified.’
Amanda grew up in Deer Park, in a house sandwiched between a heavily trafficked thoroughfare – Ballarat Road – and natural bushland – Kororoit Creek. She’s no stranger to the clash between the interests of humans and the natural world and has been writing poetry to bring attention to this since 2019.
But even with her experience as a poet and climate communicator, Amanda was struck by the emotion in the room. ‘I’ve never seen an economist and a lawyer speak so passionately about climate change. They were there because they wanted to do something. And I never see that. We just see politicians … it was really inspiring.’
As the formalities ended, Amanda performed her poem, titled The Last Call, for the attendees, including Jacinda Ardern, the former Prime Minister of New Zealand, Anote Tong, the former President of Kiribati, and Marina Silva, Brazil’s Minister of the Environment and Climate Change.
And in November last year, The Last Call was exhibited in the Oceania pavilion at COP30 in Belém, Brazil.
So what is the role of a climate poem, which some may think a puny instrument to illuminate the climate emergency on the global stage? For Amanda, ‘If I can make you feel something, then I did what I was supposed to do.’
The Last Call
Let it not be said that when called upon to act
in this moment of urgency, we stagnated
As the oceans gather heat, lifting the waters
of the Pacific upon low-lying islands,
as the coastal barriers of coral and mangrove
are thinning, let it not be said that we retreated
from new thinking until the water lapped at our door,
for we cannot live without what we are destroying.
Let it not be said that we could not find funds
for liveability, for energy sources gentler on land
and sea, drawing on the knowing of First Peoples.
Every tree removed is a lodging, a giver of oxygen
to the lungs of men and women forgetful of the gift
of a eucalypt, a merbau, a kauri tree; the sound
of a kingfisher and honeyeater. Let it not be said
that when met with the science, we chose denial,
for the land we nurture will in turn nurture us.
Let it not be said that our consumption continues
to stand on the back of another damaged village,
another homeless creature fleeing fire, flood,
tsunami or hurricane; on the continued beating
of the worn-out drum of an industry set to decline
yet clinging. Let it not be said that we did not think
of the heat of our grandchildren’s summers keeping
hem behind a closed door; how they’d see the world’s
seventh wonder as patches of diminishing colour.
Let it not be said that we could not find the will
to do the work of reforesting, of decarbonising,
of transitioning to the sun and wind and wave.
Let it not be said that we were not ambitious
for humanity; for our child’s air, water and soil
and the spaces they will think and create in.
On the morning after the cruellest bushfire,
listen to how the currawong and crow circle
above the scorched ground, beginning a call
for life to return. Note the persistent budding
from black; the green pushing through despite us.
Let it not be said that our inertia was too strong
to keep home habitable. Let it be said we chose
courage. We chose unity. We chose survival.
