Anthropocene Poetry

'What does poetry of the Anthropocene look like?' - Magma poetry magazine report, The Climate Change Issue

'I smelled the air, exhaust fumes, silage reek,
Heard from my heather bed the thickened traffic
Swarm at a roundabout five fields away
And transatlantic flights stacked in the blue.' - Seamus Heaney, 'The Tollund Man in Springtime.'

Human beings have altered climate, oceans and the bedrock beneath our feet - on a global scale. The latest IPCC report said that we have only 12 years to prevent devastating consequences from climate change.

Geologists are proposing that human alterations to Earth's systems have created a new geological epoch: the 'Anthropocene.' Although the Anthropocene has become an important idea for arts and humanities, important decisions about this potential geological epoch are made by a science-dominated Anthropocene Working Group.

My project will answer the question, How is the Anthropocene changing the way poets write?

This project has two phases:
1. setting new agendas for analysing existing Anthropocene poetry
2. leading the environmental poetry community to develop two new methods for UK poetry: interdisciplinary work with geologists and poetry about the environmental impacts of oil

1. The first phase of the project will analyse an innovative timeline of modern and contemporary English-language poetry from the UK and Ireland, by poets with international links to France, Gibraltar, Jamaica and India. The poets selected, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, Alice Oswald, Pascale Petit and Karen McCarthy Woolf, are linked through their reading of each other's work, their letters to each other, and often by mentoring one another. Scholars have recently seen environmental poetry as intimately linked to local places. These local places are often seen as bounded and unchanging. My project will show that poets are highly aware of global environmental change, and how local places can show signs of much bigger international environmental problems. Poetry that engages with the Anthropocene shows that places change through time, and are part of much larger geological and planetary processes. Heaney's 'The Tollund Man in Springtime' imagines the voice of a 6,000-year-old man preserved in a Danish bog. The poem reminds us of our connection to the ancient past and to networks of travel that are changing our climate.

This literary critical work will advance the field by showing how poetry being written in the Anthropocene shifts between local, international and global scales of environmental awareness, applying the research of Heise, Trexler and Clark to poetry analysis. A conference will bring together academic and creative thinkers to discuss Anthropocene culture and disseminate research results. Academic research will be published in a scholarly book and a journal article.

2. There have been British Anthropocene poems about climate change, plastic in the sea and polluting aviation, but not the substance that creates all of them: oil. In the Fellowship's second phase, I will push the boundaries of British Anthropocene poetry by working with an oil geologist to create 10 poems on the local and global environmental impacts of oil. An article and writing exercise will inspire others to create oil-poems.

Building on this, I will lead an innovative collaboration between women poets and geologists. The poets will create poems on a topic formerly dominated by male scientists. The poems will be published in the first volume of poetry about the Anthropocene, alongside poems sent in by the public. This publication will advance the field by showing others new directions for environmental poetry and scholarship. Writing workshops will stimulate public interest in the Anthropocene and inspire poems for submission to the magazine. The magazine issue will be launched at Poetry in Aldeburgh festival, benefiting members of the public who enjoy poetry.

This project aims to develop a new focus for environmental poetry in the UK and beyond. It will do this by creating the first edited volume of Anthropocene poetry and pioneering new methods for writing oil-poetry, through work with poets, geologists, a literary magazine and the wider cultural community.

I anticipate the following benefits:

Impact on poets in the UK:
I will commission UK-based women poets to write poems after a collaboration workshop with Anthropocene geologists, inspiring them to develop a female-led interpretation of an interdisciplinary theme.

This collaboration between 8 poets and 8 geologists will produce the following benefits:
*Inspiring women's creative responses to a topic that has been STEM-dominated and male-dominated (see CfS)
*Pioneering poetry-geology collaboration methods
*Introducing geologists to cultural responses to the Anthropocene

The interdisciplinary approach should result in new methods to inspire writers to create Anthropocene poetry, also advancing literary and critical interest in women's Anthropocene poetry (see CfS). I anticipate future interdisciplinary dialogue between poetry and geology after the publication of Magma: The Anthropocene Issue (below).

Impact on poets internationally:
Poems and articles from the collaboration will be published in a special issue of Magma poetry magazine: Magma: The Anthropocene Issue. Members of the public will also be able to submit Anthropocene poems for publication. I will publish work by 50 poets, from a public call for submissions. This will benefit their careers because poets need to publish poems in magazines to secure book deals. I anticipate selecting poetry submissions from as wide an array of international authors as possible - around 15 countries.

Example poems will be published on Magma's website after the publication of magazine (15-20,000 unique website visitors per month on average).

Impact on a literary magazine:
Magma is a leading UK poetry magazine, popular with international readers. Magma is a charity, entirely dependent on external grant income and sales. I am an associate editor at the magazine. Magma will benefit from the prestige of publishing the first edited volume of Anthropocene poetry and an exciting interdisciplinary collaboration. The poetry-geology collaboration will extend Magma's reach to new collaborators and readers in Scotland (past activities have focused on London and East Anglia.) I anticipate financial benefits for Magma: sale of 400 magazine copies at £7 each - £2,800 income.

Impact on environmental poetry genres in the UK:
New methods for writing oil-poems aim to inspire others to develop a new genre of UK ecopoetry. The writing prompt on Magma's website will encourage this. Uptake will be measured by the number of oil-poems submitted to Magma: The Anthropocene Issue.

Impact on 3rd-sector organisations

Harris Museum and Gallery - Writing Workshop: Environments in Time
*A new writing theme for 20 members of the public
*Encouraging people to submit their poems for publication in Magma's Anthropocene Issue
*Increased cultural engagement in Preston, one of UK's most culturally deprived towns
*Writing exercise later published on Museum's website: 13.5K Twitter followers

Scottish Poetry Library (SPL): 'Geopoetry' writing workshop.
Benefits:
*Introducing 15 members of public to a new environmental poetry theme
*Participants encouraged to submit poems to Anthropocene Issue
*Writing workshop prompt for SPL's blog - reach 38.7K Twitter followers

Poetry in Aldeburgh Festival
*Widening cultural participation in Anthropocene writing at magazine launch in Poetry in Aldeburgh Festival
*Broadening Aldeburgh's focus on environmental issues (past activities included an ecopoetry competition and climate change writing workshops)
*50 anticipated launch attendees, paying £8 per ticket: £400 valuable income for a poetry festival no longer receiving Arts Council funding.