Two Poetries: Spender, Poetry and Ideology
Chris Edgoose considers Stephen Spender, revolutionary poetry and the need for trust between writers and readers of poetry
Archive
I was nothing but a heretic cormorant
Rory Waterman reviews The European Eel by Steve Ely (Longbarrow, 2021)
Your Stupid Quizz
Editorial: Well done to everyone who did our Christmas Quiz
I think you get it, John
by Jill Munro — You seem to understand, John, what a poem means, / how it promises whatever has been cannot disappear // as if it had never been. A friend asked me to write / a Kenopsia, strange name
The Ecopoetry Anthology
The Ecopoetry Anthology (Trinity University Press, 2013, edited by Ann Fisher-Wirth and Laura-Gray Street, introduction by Robert Hass) is the authoritative collection of contemporary American poetry about nature and the environment. It includes poetry from iconic American poets like Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, followed by more modern poets like Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, …
Out of Time
Out of Time — Poetry from the Climate Emergency (Valley Press, 2021, edited by Kate Simpson) features original work from Caroline Bird, Inua Ellams, Pascale Petit, Karen McCarthy Woolf, Rachael Allen, Raymond Antrobus and Mary Jean Chan, among others. Tom Chivers of Penned in the Margins says “Out of Time presents an excoriating critique of Earth’s ongoing encounter with humankind – the language animal – in …
100 Poems to Save the Earth
100 Poems to Save the Earth (Seren, 2021, edited by Zoe Brigley) begs the question how, exactly, poetry can save the world? Writing from rural and urban perspectives, linking issues of social injustice with the need to protect the environment, contemporary poets from Britain, Ireland, America and beyond suggests that poetry can act as a wake-up call, that it …
The Ginkgo Prize
The Ginkgo Prize for Ecopoetry is a major international award for ecopoetry, funded by the Edward Goldsmith Foundation and organised by the Poetry School. Every year, the competition awards £8,000 in prize money, provides writers’ residencies for the winners, and supports the development of eco-poetry through a programme of free workshops, and a series of incisive essays …
Earth Songs
A Resurgence Anthology of contemporary eco-poetry (Green Books, 2002, edited by Peter Abbs) was the first major anthology of contemporary eco-poetry. It offers a wide-ranging collection of poems taken from the pages of Resurgence Magazine with contributions from Wendell Berry, Sujata Bhatt, Gillian Clarke and Seamus Heaney, among others. The poems celebrate wildlife, the seasons, wilderness, and the way in which our lives are in constant creative or destructive play with the whole of nature.
Wild Reckoning
Inspired by the fortieth anniversary of Rachel Carson’s controversial and prophetic book ‘Silent Spring’, which warned against the indiscriminate use of pesticides and its consequences for the environment, and for us. The anthology features poems commissioned from leading poets including Seamus Heaney and Andrew Motion, as well as work from a number of American eco-poets.
The Thunder Mutters
The Thunder Mutters: 101 poems for the planet (Faber, 2006, edited by Alice Oswald) begins with Oswald’s dedication to the rake — “an age-old implement which connects the earth to our hands, and the landscape with the sky.” She chooses 101 poems which map the border between the personal and natural worlds and include poems by Robert …
Earth Shattering
Earth Shattering ecopoems (Bloodaxe, 2007, edited by Neil Astley) ranges far and wide, from the wilderness poetry of ancient China to 21st-century native American poetry, with postcolonial and feminist perspectives represented by writers such as Derek Walcott, Ernesto Cardinal, Oodgeroo and Susan Griffin. The poems demonstrate the dangers and poverty of a world cut off from …