So much is possible with the digital tools we have today: Google provides information from billions of sources instantly; Facebook lets us stay in touch with friends around the globe; and Twitter allows anyone to broadcast their thoughts wherever they are. But with all this freedom comes a tradeoff, as Twitter’s censorship news reinforced for many this week. In each case, we are essentially at the mercy of the company whose network we are using (and being used by). If Google doesn’t like your name, it can block you; if Facebook doesn’t like your status, it can delete it; and if Twitter gets a takedown request for your message, it will disappear. Our freedom of speech relies on these new information gatekeepers.

Adonis holds no hope that poetry can change society. To do that, "you have to change its structures – family, education, politics. That's work art cannot do". Yet he believes it can change the "relationship between things and words, so a new image of the world can be born." Theorising about poetry is "like speaking about love. There are some things you can't explain. The world is not created to be understood, but to be contemplated and questioned."

It’s the definition of a nasty feedback loop, made worse because the changing planet is itself setting off other phenomena that only increase the warming trend.  Arctic sea ice, now melting at prodigious rates, reflects the sun’s heat back into the atmosphere.  Less ice, in other words, isn’t just a sign of the planet getting hotter, but a factor in heating up the planet.  In addition, the more iceless the oceans, the more their waters absorb carbon emissions, which only puts further pressure on many of the life forms living in them.  Similarly, the melting of the permafrost in the northern reaches of the planet, which contains vast frozen reservoirs of another greenhouse gas, methane, might -- no one is yet sure -- sooner or later release enormous amounts of methane into the atmosphere, only increasing the overheating effect.  It’s creepy.  It’s happening.  And Ma Nature really doesn’t give a damn whether we’re in denial or not.