Anthropocene Poetry

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiii

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Yvonne Reddick

   Pages 1-22

3. Anthropocene Poetry

   • Yvonne Reddick

   Pages 23-72

4. ‘The World in a Glance’: Ted Hughes, Anthropocene Scales, and Environmental Cosmopolitanism

   • Yvonne Reddick

   Pages 73-108

5. Seamus Heaney’s Environmental Poetry: Conservation Causes, Deep Time, Shifting Scales, and Climate Change

   • Yvonne Reddick

   Pages 109-173

6. Alice Oswald: Voyaging in Anthropocene Waters

   • Yvonne Reddick

   Pages 175-209

7. Pascale Petit: Entanglement, Animals, and the ‘Anthropocene Extinction’

   • Yvonne Reddick

   Pages 211-267

8. Kei Miller: Ecopoetics of Relation, Resistance, and Grief

   • Yvonne Reddick

   Pages 269-329

9. Seasonal Disturbances: Environment, Migration, Science, and an Anthropocene Poetics of Relation in Karen McCarthy Woolf’s Work

   • Yvonne Reddick

   Pages 331-370

10. Coda

    • Yvonne Reddick

    Pages 371-381

11. Back Matter

    Pages 383-389

    PDF

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
• ecopoetry
• climate change
• climate change writing
• Literature and the Environment

‘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.

• University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK

  Yvonne Reddick

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.