It's Not Easy Being Green: A Year of Trying to be Environmentally Friendly: A Poetry Diary: A Verse a Day for a Year

By Caroline Burrows

Poet Caroline Burrows / VerseCycle wrote 'It's Not Easy Being Green: A Year of Trying to be Environmentally Friendly' a verse a day for an entire year, about her successes and failures in trying to lower her carbon footprint, during what turned out to be a very eventful year, all summarised in her final verse No.367: I started these verses to try being eco-friendly/I didn't realise they'd become like my diary/As well as being greener/I got an MA;Dated a Mr. Wrong/Had a break-down/Friends showed me better ways/Two very special people died/No-one predicted a pandemic/All this nearly made me forget about Bloody Brexit/It's not easy being green; But maybe being greener was the easy bit. The project went from daily posts on social media; to a social engagement video project with guest speakers recording verses during lockdowns in the pandemic; and was shortlisted for the Sustainability First Arts Prize.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Caroline Burrows
• Release date: Jul 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223079880

Caroline Burrows

Caroline Burrows’ poetry has featured on BBC Radio 4, been printed in BBC Sky at Night Magazine, shown at the Sheffield Adventure and Kendal Mountain Film Festivals, and short-listed for the Sustainability First Art Prize. Her own one-woman poetry show by bike 'Turning Pedals into Poems' was shortlisted for the 2023 Saboteur Awards, and also gained her a place in Cycling UK’s #100WomenInCycling 2022.  She has previously worked on poetry commissions for Glenside Hospital Museum, Bristol Ideas, and Triodos the Ethical Bank.  She was most recently Poet in Residence at Cromarty Arts Trust.  Her next poetry endeavour will be teaching and performing poetry as part of the Gaia/Earth installation at Durham Cathedral.  Her short stories have been published in The National Flash Fiction Anthology and The Charles Causley Trust, and she has written articles for several publishers including Cycling UK & Adventure Cyclist magazines.   You can find out more on IG/Twitter/Facebook/YouTubes/LinkTree: @VerseCycle

Book preview

INTRODUCTION: The concept, and reflection on writing a verse a day for a year.

The initial idea for writing It’s Not Easy Being Green: A Year of Trying to be Environmentally Friendly stemmed from my wanting to live a greener lifestyle but discovering that for every eco success there seemed to also be plenty of failures.  I believe, hopefully, that the majority of us regard the environment as an important issue in theory, but most of us, myself included, are failing in reality.  I wanted to question the why and how of this.

I had just completed an MA in Creative Writing, in which I’d mainly focussed on prose.  However, I had also been writing poetry in my spare moments.  I believe poetry has an immediacy to it, with certain branches having an ability to communicate a message quickly and clearly.  I thought one way to ensure I thought more about the eco choices I was making would be to document them as a regular practice and habit, hence the writing of a verse a day.  Therefore, after finishing my MA, I applied for a poetry scholarship as I couldn’t afford to do another MA myself, with a proposal, and a manifesto written as a sonnet, of my intention to document the positive, negative or indifferent results of my endeavour to be fed back into the content of my poetry.

An additional way to keep myself on track was by stating that I would post my work daily on various social media platforms, more for myself rather than whether or not I had any followers, using the #ItsNotEasyBeingGreen.  There was only one scholarship available and I didn’t get it, but because I really believed in my proposal, I thought ‘I’m just going to do it myself anyway,’ and so began writing, posting Verse 1 on 16th September 2019, and finishing 367 verses later (due to me not being able to count correctly) on 18th September 2020.

When I began the project, I presumed the topic of documenting being environmentally-friendly would be challenging enough. However, as is the case with creative projects, other factors permeated the poetry, making the verses include elements on a personal micro level, as well as out to a more macro external level, which I summed up in my final verse.  Those included: an anti-depressant dosage medication change which resulted in a serious acute depressive episode; the death of two very loved people whom I regarded as mentors: my granddad who was an inspiration in both his continuous upbeat manner, and in his love of cycle touring; and former writing tutor and friend Glenn Carmichael, who always encouraged me to write, to get out of my own way, and to always have a go at my creative endeavours.  And of course the Covid-19 pandemic began. 

Looking back, I’m quite shocked at everything that happened over the course of one year, and amazed that I was able to keep writing my verses despite everything else that was going on, while trying to maintain a thread of being environmentally friendly throughout, sometimes loosely.  Conversely, having documented a year in this way, it has also allowed me to really take notice of events and patterns in my life, the good, the bad, and the ugly, which will hopefully lead to me understanding my internal and external worlds for the better, and to make more eco friendly choices.

Verse 1

I’ve switched to using loose-leaf tea,

‘Cos teabags sealed with glue leak micro-plastics in the sea.

But my lycra leggings are made from polyurethane,

And leach the same when in the washing machine.

I need to try harder; it’s not easy being green.

16th September 2019.  #ItsNotEasyBeingGreen

Verse 367

I started these verses to try being eco-friendly,

I didn’t realise they’d become like my diary:

As well as being greener, I got an MA;

Dated a Mr. Wrong; Had a break-down; Friends showed me better ways;

Two very special people died; No-one predicted a pandemic.

All this nearly made me forget about Bloody Brexit.

It’s not easy being green; But maybe being greener was the easy bit.

18th September 2020.  #ItsNotEasyBeingGreen

At first, I was posting static images of text on different plain backgrounds on Twitter and Instagram, and recording audio version withs those images which I posted on YouTube daily.  However, the time it took to create each individual video verse for YouTube became counter-productive so I soon ceased that strand.  I had previously quit Facebook as I found it difficult to police the time I wasted on there, but decided to return to it with the intention of only posting poetry.  My first career way back in my twenties was as a graphic designer, so I started to incorporate photos into my images, and over time, I developed a uniform profile and logo using the name: @VerseCycle (a lot of my other poetry is cycling themed) across the different platforms.

The Covid-19 pandemic and the first strict lockdown began just as I was beginning to recover from an acute depressive episode and struggling to regain stability.  One thing that is actively discouraged when suffering from depression is isolation, which was in strict contrast to what was being enforced during lockdown.  Therefore, in order to help my recovery, I decided to expand the project by returning to YouTube, but this time by incorporating social engagement by asking people to record and send a verse each to be compiled into groups of ten verses.  Not only did this help keep me connected with the much needed support of friends while I was unwell, but it also transformed the project from a local individual concept into one which has featured local, national, and international video contributions. extending the project further.

A lot happened in a short period of time, and revisiting some of the verses when sending them out to guest readers proved at times extremely emotional.  Sometimes, I adapted such verses due to reflecting more on how I felt about events