Anthropocene Poetry

Anthropocene Poetry: Place, Environment and Planet argues that the idea of the Anthropocene is inspiring new possibilities for poetry. It can also change the way we read and interpret poems. If environmental poetry was once viewed as linked to place, this book shows how poets are now grappling with environmental issues from the local to the planetary: climate change and the extinction crisis, nuclear weapons and waste, plastic pollution and the petroleum industry. This book intervenes in debates about culture and science, traditional poetic form and experimental ecopoetics, to show how poets are collaborating with environmental scientists and joining environmental activist movements to respond to this time of crisis. From the canonical work of Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney, to award-winning poets Alice Oswald, Pascale Petit, Kei Miller, and Karen McCarthy Woolf, this book explores major figures from the past alongside acclaimed contemporary voices. It reveals Seamus Heaney’s support for conservation causes and Ted Hughes’s astonishingly forward-thinking research on climate change; it discusses how Pascale Petit has given poetry to Extinction Rebellion and how Karen McCarthy Woolf set sail with scientists to write about plastic pollution. This book deploys research on five poetry archives in the UK, USA and Ireland, and the author’s insider insights into the commissioning processes and collaborative methods that shaped important contemporary poetry publications. Anthropocene Poetry finds that environmental poetry is flourishing in the face of ecological devastation. Such poetry speaks of the anxieties and dilemmas of our age, and searches for paths towards resilience and resistance.

‘Anthropocene Poetry connects poetry with urgent environmental concerns. Its originality lies in exposing previously overlooked aspects of these poets’ works; in its use of archival- and interview-sourced original material; and in the way it theoretically re-positions these writers.’ 

Terry Gifford, Profesor Honorífico, Universidad de Alicante and Research Fellow, Bath Spa University.

Yvonne Reddick is Reader in English Literature and Creative Writing at University of Central Lancashire, UK. She is the author of Ted Hughes: Environmentalist and Ecopoet (Palgrave 2017) and Burning Season (Bloodaxe 2023). She is joint editor of Magma: The Anthropocene Issue (2019), and she wrote and presented the environmental documentary Searching for Snow Hares (2023), directed by Aleks Domanski.