‘We have to fight for what is right’: Patti Smith on gender, Sally Rooney and Cop26

In the run-up to the climate conference, the rock'n'roll poet reflects - with a little help from her daughter - on a life spent breaking barriers, hanging out with Dylan and learning to Instagram

More than two decades ago, Patti Smith and a group of other artists were sitting with the Dalai Lama when the late Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys asked the Tibetan spiritual leader a question: what's the number-one thing that young people can do to make a better world? Without missing a beat, the Dalai Lama replied: Look after the environment."

I thought it was so beautiful," Smith says in her trademark New York drawl. That was his number-one preoccupation. Not to free Tibet, but to take in hand a global concern that was going to affect us all, on a scale we haven't seen before."