100 Poems to Save the Earth

Disgrifiad Cymraeg / Welsh Description

Casgliad o gerddi yn cynrychioli'r symudiad cadarnhaol a phenderfynol sy'n ceisio newid, er gwell, y modd y mae'r ddynoliaeth yn rhyngweithio gyda'r amgylchfyd naturiol. Mae'r cerddi yn arddangos gwerthoedd cyfiawnder ecolegol, nid yn unig er mwyn gwella perthynas dyn â natur ond er mwyn cydnabod y cyswllt â phroblemau cymdeithasol.

Disgrifiad Saesneg / English Description

100 Poems to Save the Earth represents a positive and determined movement to change for the better how human beings interact with the natural environment. The poems uphold values of ecological justice, a movement that works not only on improving human beings' relationships with nature, but that recognizes links with social problems.

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Bywgraffiad yr Awdur / Author Biography

Kristian Evans is a poet and environmentalist from Bridgend in South Wales. He is interested in ecological philosophy, animism and the history of magic and has published articles in a wide variety of magazines and literary journals in the UK and beyond. He is currently Assistant to the Directors at the environmental charity Sustainable Wales, and sister organisation, SUSSED, a community cooperative, where he manages and coordinates several campaigns. Zoe Brigley has three collections of poetry from Bloodaxe books, and a nonfiction essay collection, Notes from a Swing State from Parthian and has edited Feminism, Literature and Rape Narratives from Routledge. She is Assistant Professor in English and Sexuality Studies at Ohio State University and is a contributing Editor to Poetry Wales magazine.

Adolygiad y Cyhoeddwr / Publisher Review

This collection contains one poem from each of a hundred published poets, writing in English but drawn from across the world. The title might seem ironic or grandiose but draws the reader to consider that ‘the crisis of our time is … a crisis of perception’ and that it is (as Wilfred Owen wrote) the poet’s duty to warn. Many of the poems have clearly been written in response to recent events and have appeared in publications over the past five years, but others are selected from earlier work. (Wendell Berry’s ‘The Peace of Wild Things’ is from 1968, but he has been a voice for the Earth throughout his long lifetime.) The contribution of poet and activist Dom Bury, ‘Threshold’, confronts the subject most directly: ‘This is the hour we face our own extinction / and choose whether we live or die together.’ His is a call to believe in a new world and way of life. Cath Drake’s ‘How I Hold the World in this Climate Emergency’ describes a confusion and helplessness with which many will identify, while Ross Cogan’s ‘Ragnarok’ sees a more absolute end of ‘the suffering world’. To some, like Duncan Bush and Tamar Yoseloff, the stubborn power of small things will prevail over human designs, or contrive to remain ignorant of them, as in Peter Sirr’s ‘Whalefall’. Many of the poems celebrate the precious richness of nature, as in Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s ‘Invitation’, Jan Hadfield’s ‘Our Lady of Isbister’ and Jennifer Hunt’s ‘September’, but more carry a sense of threat. Pascale Petit’s ‘For a Coming Extinction’ foresees the last tiger, Jane Lovell finds ‘a memory of birdsong’ in ‘Exhibit’, and Gerry Loose’s ‘After Amergin’ takes an ancient model to describe current phenomena. Em Strang’s ‘Water of Ae’ is a celebration haunted by both human and natural fragility as she repeats ‘Don’t wait’, while Jennifer Wong’s ‘Yangtze’ distils an awareness of destruction and helplessness: ‘I don’t want to know what happens / to the porpoises. Please stop asking.’ One of the purposes of this anthology is to make sure we do not stop asking. The editors have, almost without exception, chosen living poets as contributors, and I wondered whether, in concentrating on those facing the dilemmas of the moment, they were excluding important earlier voices with the same concerns. In the introduction they twice quote Blake but, while wishing to widen the range of voices included, exclude any non-contemporaries who might have added a further dimension. That said, this collection certainly demonstrates the richness and diversity of poetic response to both the natural world and humans’ ways of living in and responding to it in a time of existential crises.