“Poetry is, by definition, a space in which certainties get undermined”

By Hannah Martin

Nuns Island Theatre, Galway, was full on April 22, 2026, for the lunchtime event at Cúirt International Festival of Literature, titled The Stinging Fly: The Climate Issue. 

With tables littered with native, environmentally friendly flowers and the Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop stand to the right of the stage, people of all ages, and one pug, settled in to enjoy Earth Day, hearing from four climate activists. The sun flowed through the cathedral-style windows as The Stinging Fly editor, Lisa McInerney, visual artist Ríonach Ní Néill, poet Joey Connolly, and climate academic Dr Nessa Cronin took to the stage. 

The Climate Issue, a landmark publication in Ireland, brings together creatives and academics in one magazine to foster an accessible conversation and answer questions about climate change. A plethora of emotions is conveyed, from trauma, pessimism, frustration, and anger. It accurately represents the way people are feeling in a lively way that omits any airy-fairy attitudes. 

McInerney spoke about the process of creating the issue and how she felt that it was a part of their mission as a magazine that holds social justice close to their hearts. 

“It wasn’t a difficult thing, because there is so much climate writing coming into us,” she commented. “It is something that writers care about. It is something that writers are anxious about. It is something that writers feel the need to respond to.” 

With the submissions came the idea to move away from journalistic integrity and watertight accuracy, and towards a more quirky, non-fiction angle: “This is where the space for creativity may have some sort of impact,” McInerney explained.

 “There are a lot of really brilliant voices on climate who are very learned. But we wanted it to feel quite accessible… Where we fit in as the writers, as the artists, is that we don’t have the same requisite towards accuracy. We can appeal to emotion.” 

Positive propaganda is where the writers fit into the climate change effort. Emotion over statistics, artwork over fearmongering, was argued to appeal to people and tell the story of something as all-encompassing as climate change.

Connolly spoke on the back of this, highlighting that, really, all writing is about the climate and how poetry holds power over the natural world: “Language is the interface between the human world and the non-human world.

“Poetry is a way of undoing certain elements of how language works and the kind of rigid instrumental rationality of language. Poetry is, by definition, a space in which certainties get undermined.

“I don’t think writing is going to be the tool with which we bring down the Government. A poem is not the right thing to try and destroy capitalism with, but there are certain things you can do through literature and poetry.”

For The Stinging Fly, they hope to use literature, poetry, and creativity to bridge the accessibility gap between climate writing and the people. The issue is a new way of exploring ways in which art has power, and as Ní Néill put it: “If we act, the alternative to our climate disaster could be something euphoric.”