'#SDGeneration': A poem by Cameron Holleran

Notes from the poet

Before my performance at the SDGeneration event, I invited the audience to become 'citizen poets', to complement the topic of citizen science that was being discussed throughout the day. In much the same way that citizen science does not require great scientific knowledge from its participants, merely a willingness to join in and be directed by academics, I wanted the audience to help me write poetry without needing them to know a great deal about poetry. I asked them to think about my poem and the events of the day and to simply write down an arresting image or thought that occurred to them throughout the day. I would then use these as the basis as a poem, using my skills as a poet to turn the raw data into something that the individual contributors could not - in effect, mirroring what they would be doing with data gathered by their citizen scientists. 

The notes that came back to me were very varied; there were notes of fear, loss and regret, but also ambitious notes tinged with hope. One response described the SDGs as a 'North Star', which to me also conveyed an idea that these goals are old, dependable and immutable - humans have always wanted an end to poverty, disease and hunger and the work we do towards that today is part of an unbroken chain that stretches back to the first time a human shared food with someone going without. Another note bemoaned the ageism that was often present in a lot of activism, that somehow older people had missed their chance to help and could serve no purpose in redirecting the mistakes of the past - this became the line about the broom. What I have tried to do is to capture the emotions that people were kind enough to give to me and to send it back to them in a way which, I hope, provides clarity and direction.“

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Watch the SDGeneration event in full on Facebook

Missed the event? No problem. You can watch a full video from the morning here, and from the afternoon here, including a keynote from Dr David Nabarro, performances from jazz artist and researcher Dr Corina Kwami and IGP poet-in-residence Cameron Holleran.