“Meu útero é uma bomba!” Ecofeminist poetry for the global climate strike

Date: 27 September 2019

Venue: CrewHassan | 18.00

We all read the news.

In the last two days only we heard about the melting of one ton of ice per day in Greenland, of ice-melting in the Alps, of Siberia burning and releasing green-house gases in our atmosphere, of the increasing heat during the summer, of the increasing pace of deforestation in the Amazon forest, of lack of water in different parts of the world (and prevalently in the South), of how climate change will have an impact on geopolitics and leave densely populated areas of the planet in conditions adverse to life.

Maths is simple and frightening. What to do in the face of raw facts?

In 1974, François d’Eaubonne was writing “Le Feminisme ou la Mort” and coining the term ecofeminism.

Ecofeminism, in a simple and maybe simplistic definition, is the recognition of how violence against women and nature derives from the same patriarchal system which produces the Other and objectifies it, deriving from this process its right to oppress and exploit it. To recognise how elements of gender, race, sexuality, socio-economic status and health are intersectionally affected by the environment and affect it is but the first step towards shaping alternative practices and communities. Nowadays, youths from all over the world are coming together in the protest against the continuous and irresponsible exploitation of natural resources and raise their voices to defend their future. Throughout history, women (and not only women) have raised their voices through poems, representing nature as a locus of escape from violence or of empowerment and awareness of social injustice.

In the day that closes the Global Environmental Strike (20-27 of September) we want to gather in celebration and give new voice to these words, feel them resonate in our bodies and take them home with us. Everyone is welcome. We are going to read poems, listen to music, talk and meet people, we are going to have fun with seriousness and think with levity. Because poetry is to see beauty in the abyss, and to face it. In the hope that this meeting would encourage other activities linked to the Global Climate Strike in Lisbon and that it will offer a platform of true exchange, we shout: Ecofeminism or Death!

The reading of poems and short-stories will be alternated to moments of music, played by Jonas Pelle.

Everyone can read: we welcome suggestions of poems and ask you to send them to the following email address: vmontesi@campus.ul.pt. If you want to read but don’t know what, write us at the same email: we have plenty of poems to suggest! Papers with poems will be left on the tables for last-minute improvisers. Finally, come even if you don’t want to read; listen to the others and have a drink with us.

This activity is realised with the collaboration of the research cluster P’ARTE and the International Conference Breaking Boundaries: Academia, Activism and the Arts.