The app for independent voices
I started regularly picking up litter on our local common (Wadsley & Loxley Common, in Sheffield) during lockdown. Even in what appeared, on the surface, to be uncluttered nature, it's amazing how quickly I could fill an entire bin-bag once I started poking around in the undergrowth.
Now, I live in the most remote part of England, and yet there's rarely a time when I don't come home with something in my pockets (I'm forever forgetting to take a bag, so I now have designated litter-pockets): energy drinks and gels from passing cyclists, vape packaging from the local farmers, sweet and crisp wrappers blown in from far away. A couple of months ago I found a delicate transparent plastic assemblage, which had clearly once been a Peppa Pig foil balloon, worn down to gossamer by months of blowing across heather moorland. I posted it on Instagram, and an artist requested that I send it to them. Can't wait to see what they make of it! Poetry from junk.