“I’m not upset that you lied to me. I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you” Friedrich Nietzsche The Southern Italian honour code of silence — ‘Omertà’ runs deep. We know it from countless gangster movies. The refusal to speak to or engage with questioning authorities. The wilful…

It’s the end of November. We’re in lockdown (again). Most shops are shuttered even as the festive lights are flickering on. Barnard Castle blackly approached Dominic Cummings to conduct their big ‘switch on’ (an invitation he didn’t deign to respond to). And given the constraint many will have their online…

This piece appears as the Foreword in the new book ‘A Guide to Eco-Anxiety: How to protect the planet and your mental health’ by Anouchka Grose, published 23rd June 2020. In his ‘Motto to the Svendborg Poems’ published in the spring of 1939, Bertolt Brecht wrote ‘In the dark times, will there also be singing? Yes, there will also be singing, about the dark times.’ As a climate activist for the last quarter of a century those words speak to…

An illustrated poem for all our health service workers out there on the front-line, all the sacrifices they are making, and all the appreciation we can muster for those facing the hardest and most challenging of times with dedication, dignity and respect. The very least the rest of us can…

This poem is inspired by seven of the different types of love described by the ancient Greeks, described well in this article (copied below). The ancient Greeks had seven words for love that corresponded to different types of love, ranging from physical love (eros) to purely spiritual love (agape). …

A poem inspired by Sam Lee’s ‘Singing with Nightingales’. Ed Gillespie is a writer, speaker, futurist and poet. In 2007/8 he circumnavigated the world without flying and wrote ‘Only Planet — a flightfree adventure around the world’. He is a serial entrepreneur and an adviser to or investor in a number of ethical businesses. Ed is also a facilitator with the Forward Institute’s responsible leadership programme, a Director of Greenpeace UK and Co-Founder of Futerra

This is a poem replete with symbolism. The crown of the ‘corona’ virus itself, the international warning symbol of plague (in the corners), the Chinese character for ‘epidemic’, a Black Death Plague Doctor in mask & goggles, a skull…and yet, the Hecate Wheel (the 6 pointed star in a purple…

‘If I ruled the world, every day would be the first day of spring’ sang Tony Bennett. On this first day of spring in March 2020 something extraordinary is unfolding in regard to our supposed ruling of the world in this unprecedented pandemic lockdown. Blue skies are reappearing over previously…

Billions of years of fossilised sunshine burnt that is in turn overcooking the planet. A reckless fratricide and sororicide of the family of life driving the sixth mass extinction. A vampiric siphoning of wealth into a mosquito-like 1% of the population from the body of humanity (which reminds me of…