It was a privilege to read so many incredibly creative poems that celebrated the richness of nature. It was clear from all of the poems how much meaning there is in nature for our community, especially the wide variety of subjects. From insects to oceans, whole seasons to moments in time, the endless ways you can interact with our natural world really shone through in the entries. Congratulations and very well done to everyone, and especially to the winner Catherine!
Ellie Bignall, Senior Communications Officer at King's Climate & Sustainability
25 March 2026
Introducing the winner of the Climate & Sustainability Month poetry competition
Poems were submitted by King's staff and student to celebrate nature in all its forms
During February, staff and students from across King's wrote poems celebrating the vibrant diversity of nature on our planet.
Entries were judged blind by a panel that included literature and sustainability experts from King's, who complimented the quality and breadth of submissions.
Their chosen winner, The Magnolia of St Mary Le Strand Speaks, was written by Catherine Robinson, Centre Manager at the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Safe and Trusted AI.
The poem was chosen for its gentle and considered voice, sense of place and time, and subtle but striking ending.
Read the winning poem:
The Magnolia of St Mary Le Strand Speaks
For eleven months of twelve,
You pass me by unseeing.
Until I unveil my beauty,
For a moment all too fleeting.
A soft blush in the aching sky,
A reproach to noise and stone.
You stop and stare, transfixed,
And try to keep me as your own.
You trap me in a frame of time,
To hold me once, for all.
But my glory can’t be captured,
And my petals always fall.
‘Until next year’, you cheerfully say,
‘For the seasons, they never change’.
And yet the springtime cool is ebbing,
And nothing stays the same.
My blooms come earlier every year,
The air is pressing warm.
My petals act as prophets now,
To plead and urge, and warn.
- Catherine Robinson, Centre Manager at the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Safe and Trusted AI
Ellie Bignall, who organised the competition, said:
In addition to the winning poem, four poems were selected individually by judges to be Highly Commended.
These poems were selected for a variety of reasons, including their emotional resonance with a wide range of natural elements.
Read the Highly Commended poems:
Home of the Ant and the Human
1.
Centuries lie in paths of mud, soil and stone,
The welcome mat for nature, our universal home.
Dappled light splashes across the grooves of an ancient oak,
A tiny ant takes her first breath as her family awoke.
A complex web of tunnels seep below (her safe retreat!)
Emerald foliage blooms and rustles in the breeze (good to eat!)
Dancing melodies emerge from a calling wren (that she must avoid…)
Prismatic colours scatter across her forest and her den (what joy!)
Her woodland are vibrant, interconnected, alive,
With flora and fauna working together to thrive,
And sometimes a human would gently pass through,
Gasping in awe at what nature could do.
2.
The paths of mud, soil and stone turns shadowy,
A man frowns, it’s hard to turn a profit when nature is free,
But no matter, now woodland could be sold and bought!
He stopped to watch an ant, then crushed her under his boot.
Nature, locked up, lucked-down, suffocated,
Traded away or left to decay in the walls humanity created,
Deforestation, pollution, a cacophony of death,
Severing plant from animal, and humankind from earth.
Amidst the horror, crafted communities gather,
Determined, they fight for nature together,
But wildlife was still breathless, ever declining…
And some wondered — is there any point in trying?
3.
Hope is mingled in a path of mud, soil and stone,
A young child trundles through his home away from home,
A nature reserve, saved through a campaign,
Against greedy destruction’s tyrannical reign.
A pterosaur reborn swoops close by,
Her eagle eye catches an eager eye,
His parents chatter of the threats the birds endured —
His heart dropped to hear their future was unsecured.
With muddy hands and a crystal clear mind,
His resolve hardened, his mission self-assigned:
He would create a just world with sustainability enshrined,
Where the wild is free, no longer confined,
A world with humanity and nature eternally intertwined.
An ant crawled on his hand and he chose to be kind.
- William Bajwa, Postgraduate student (Arts & Humanities)
Carnlough
Place of cairns
Piles of stone.
From the rock,
tenderly torn.
And, tenderly put back.
An exchange of rock and hands.
A place of rock and lochs,
Of given names, pinned myths and fabrications.
A telling of witches and celestial spirits in perilous places,
a black rock encircled with currents,
a narrative produced to protect their wee bas.
Embedding stories, legacy into the landscape;
A storing.
And a hollowing, marked by limestone quarries and harvests.
An excavation of shells, pebbles and plastic bottle caps.
A melding, and a birthing
Of words and images.
A self-expression of a place conceived,
of rock and cairns.
- Danielle Dempsey, Library Data & Resources Coordinator
A Secret Journey
Seven black spots on a red-lacquer back,
she navigates the forest of a single fern.
To her, the dew is a wide, still lake.
To us, the oak is a ribbed cathedral.
We move through the quiet green,
our shadows stitching the earth together.
Soft moss marks a trail
into pockets of light, littered,
between the dense jungle.
We hunt for a future dreamt up under a sparking sky,
nightfall settles with a blanket of lies,
as loud as waves that crash and lament over stones.
A picture full of golden rays,
a new light, another day.
Lose your edges, the water says. Come home.
Allow the tide of time to make you gentle,
find true peace in broken leaves and pieces of bone,
Each fallen leaf feeds the earth it touches.
A spot of red and black-
she climbs over a decaying leaf,
towards a river that ends in a stream.
Alas—she was destined to fall,
but the water does not break her.
It carries her, a crimson boat,
back into the pulse of a beating heart
- Meghna Jayakar, Postgraduate student (Life Sciences & Medicine)
My father’s youth – a haiku
Sunlight through old doors
Mango trees once lined these fields
Here my father grew
- Diva Rahmani, Senior Education Support Officer