Poetry
Category: Poetry, Poetry Anthologies
Number of pages: 143
ISBN: 9781781726242
Publication date: July 19, 2021
Price: £12.99
Our climate is on the brink of catastrophic change. 100 Poems to Save the Earth invites us to fine-tune our senses, to listen to the world around us, pay attention to what we have been missing. The defining crisis of our time is revealed to be fundamentally a crisis of perception. For too long, the earth has been exploited. With its incisive Foreword, this landmark anthology is a call to action to fight the threat facing the only planet we have.
Writing from rural and urban perspectives, linking issues of social injustice with the need to protect the environment, this selection of renowned contemporary poets from Britain, Ireland, America and beyond attend carefully to the new evidence, redraw the maps and, full of trust, keep going, proving that in fact, poetry is exactly what we need to save the earth.
“This compelling suite of poems is a timely reminder to cherish, to celebrate. What could be more enjoyable than beautiful poems about this beautiful planet? This collection is immediate, moving, wise and unforgettable as it is unputdownable!” – Daljit Nagra, poet and presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Poetry Extra
“These achingly beautiful poems, from a range of stellar talents, animate and explore the sometimes-frayed connection we have with our precious planet and remind us how to refind ourselves amid the landscape we call home.” – Sonya Huber, author of Pain Woman Takes Your Keys
“Wales was the first country in the world to introduce a Future Generations Act. This collection of Poems to Save the Earth from a Welsh Publisher reminds us that poetry and art can also be a vital part of a sustainable future.” – Mark Drakeford, First Minister of Wales
“…it is an absolute necessity for poets to celebrate our world and engage with its future. This is a marvellous compendium to show how they are attempting this…” – Robert Minhinnick
Featuring 100 of the best new and established contemporary poets:
Gbenga Adesina, Kelli Russell Agodon, Sascha Akhtar, Kazim Ali, Mir Mahfuz Ali, Abeer Ameer, Simon Armitage, David Baker, Fiona Benson, Liz Berry, Wendell Berry, Rachael Boast, Eavan Boland, Leo Boix, Sean Bonney, Marianne Boruch, Helen Bowell, Elizabeth-Jane Burnett, Jane Burn, John Burnside, Dom Bury, Duncan Bush, Siobhán Campbell, Vahni Capildeo, Gillian Clarke, Ross NR Cogan, Grahame Davies, Tishani Doshi, Cath Drake, Camille T Dungy, Rhian Edwards, Carrie Etter, Vievee Francis, Izzy Galleymore, Ross Gay, WS Graham, Vona Groarke, Philip Gross, Richard Gwyn, Jen Hadfield, Paul Henry, Sean Hewitt, Bob Hicok, Jane Hirshfield, Rhiannon Hooson, Jennifer Hunt, Kathleen Jamie, John Kinsella, Mimi Khalvati, Joanna Klink, Gwyneth Lewis, Gerry Loose, Jane Lovell, John McCullough, Medbh McGuckian, André Mangeot, Paula Meehan, Jennifer Militello, Kei Miller, Robert Minhinnick, David Morley, Katrina Naomi, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Caitríona O’Reilly, Alice Oswald, Craig Santos Perez, Pascale Petit, Carl Phillips, Clare Pollard, Kate Potts, Sheenagh Pugh, Sina Queyras, Vidyan Ravinthiran, Deryn Rees-Jones, Carter Revard, Roger Robinson, Erin Robinsong, Carol Rumens, Owen Sheers, Penelope Shuttle, Colin Simms, Peter Sirr, Martha Sprackland, Anne Stevenson, Em Strang, Will Stone, Melissa Studdard, Michael Symmons Roberts, George Szirtes, Rebecca Tamás Marvin Thompson, Samuel Tongue, Ellen Van Neerven, Maggie Wang, Gwen Nell Westerman, Sam Wilson Fletcher, Jillian Weise, Jennifer Wong, Tamar Yoseloff, Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe.
Zoë Brigley
Zoë Brigley has three PBS recommended poetry collections: The Secret (2007), Conquest (2012), and Hand & Skull (2019) (all from Bloodaxe); and recently a poetry chapbook, Aubade After A French Movie (Broken Sleep 2020). She has a collection of nonfiction essays Notes from a Swing State (Parthian 2019). She is Assistant Professor in English at the Ohio State University where she produces an anti-violence podcast: Sinister Myth. She won an Eric Gregory Award for the best British poets under 30, was Forward Prize commended, and listed in the Dylan Thomas Prize.
She is co-editor (with Kristian Evans) of the landmark poetry anthology 100 Poems to Save the Earth.
Kristian Evans
Kristian Evans is a writer and editor from Kenfig in south Wales, interested in ecological philosophy, modes of dwelling, liminality, and Welsh history and culture. He is the author of the poetry chapbook Unleaving (HappenStance, 2015) and the non-fiction chapbook Otherworlds (with Zoë Brigley, Broken Sleep, 2021) and has written several texts for performance. A keen amateur naturalist and walker, he writes a semi-regular column for Sustainable Wales, “A Kenfig Journal,” and is co-editor (with Zoë Brigley) of 100 Poems to Save the Earth. He was shortlisted for Michael Marks UK Environmental Poet of the Year 2023.
“This is an anthology which celebrates the diversity of humanity and the diversity of nature. It showcases an abundance of poetic styles and a variety of approaches to writing about our fragile earth and its complex ecology. The poems speak to each other; they declare themselves to be real, honest and human.”
Rachel Carney, Created to Read
“At the end of the day, what one wants from a book entitled 100 Poems to Save the Earth is hope. And we are not denied that in this collection … the poems of true hope are, unsurprisingly, in rather short supply. But then, the fact that there are 100 poems here wanting to save the earth is, in itself, a glimmer of hope.”
Alwyn Marriage, London Grip
“Overall these poems remind us of our own fragility. They are an invitation to take note of the world around us, to look at it with fresh eyes and to interact with it in a new way.”
Neal Leadbeater, WriteOutLoud
“One of the many wonderful things about Zoë Brigley and Kristian Evans’ curation of 100 Poems to Save the Earth is the angle of approach, which is both unconventional and generous: half expecting a division into sections, I was pleasantly surprised to discover general themes arising in vague, suggestive tranches … a beautiful, brilliant, desperately sad collection.”
Steve Whitaker, Yorkshire Times
“A thought-provoking, at times disconcerting, occasionally heartbreaking, but more often veneration-inspiring hoard of nature-observations, this anthology speaks the message we all need to hear: we must do more than just notice nature to save it and ourselves, but noticing is a good first step.”
Judy Darley, SkyLightRain
“Many of the voices here are new and very welcome to me … There is a merciful absence of the kind of overt, finger-wagging didacticism that used to disfigure eco-poetry but seems to have all but died out … there is some seriously interesting reading here.”
Sheenagh Pugh, Live Journal
“T
The appearance of this poetry curation could hardly be more timely given the publication of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which sounded a clear ‘code red’ for climate catastrophe, even as enormous swathes of California and Siberia were swept by wildfires while tourists ploshed through a flooded St Mark’s Square in Venice. The editors anticipate that obvious question – how can poetry save the world? – in their introduction. Here they suggest that poetry can
call us to stay awake, to find the words to describe how it feels, to sing to what hurts, to reach out, to attend more closely and with more care, to each other, and to all ourt fellow species, to see all things as our kin.
That close attention and care is abundant in its pages.”
Jon Gower, Nation Cymru
“This is an anthology where you’ll find exquisite beauty and wonder side by side with thoughtful provocation … which celebrates the diversity of humanity and the diversity of nature. It showcases an abundance of poetic styles and a variety of approaches to writing about our fragile earth and its complex ecology. The poems speak to each other; they declare themselves to be real, honest and human.”
Rachel Carney, Created to Read
“Many of the voices here are new and very welcome to me … with some poems, I thrilled to a sensitive and vivid evocation of nature … There is a merciful absence of the kind of overt, finger-wagging didacticism that used to disfigure eco-poetry but seems to have all but died out … there is some seriously interesting reading here.”
Sheenagh Pugh, Live Journal
“It was impossible to find any poems that weren’t pulling their weight with careful selection evident throughout and it had me concluding that this is one of the strongest anthologies I have read in recent times.”
Black Bough Poetry
Ellen van Neerven reads their poem ‘Love and Tradition’ and sets a prompt to inspire your own poems.
