Ecopoetics with Kate Simpson, Emma Must and Linda France

What role can, and should, poetry play in the climate
crisis? Is reading and writing poetry an inherently ecological act and if
so how do we define ‘ecopoetry’? Join Editor Kate Simpson and
poets Linda France and Emma Must as they discuss the poetics
of climate – charting deep geologic time through to
current anthropocentric behaviours whilst utilising language as a
witness to our time on Earth. In this discussion and reading, we speak to,
and of, the human and more-than-human, exploring words and worlds in
tandem. 

 Out of Time:
Poetry from the Climate Emergency, edited by Kate Simpson was
selected as a Guardian Book of the
Year and was awarded a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation, lauded as
the ‘definitive anthology for this decisive decade.’ Published in tandem with
Friends of the Earth’s 50th anniversary, Out
of Time includes poems from Caroline Bird, Mary Jean Chan, Seán
Hewitt, Raymond Antrobus, Linda France and Emma Must, amongst others. 

 Linda France’s latest collection Startling (New Writing North / Faber, October 2022), is the
tenth collection from Laurel Prize-winning poet and comprises poems written
from, and into, the fabric of the sixth mass extinction, practising a concept
of ‘radical kindness.’ In this uncanny, yet deeply familiar world, beginnings
end and endings begin, and we are tasked, as readers, to think beyond the limitations
of our perception and enter the throes of deep, geological time. Emma Must’s The Ballad of Yellow Wednesday commemorates 30 years since the
Twyford Down protests against major road-building in the 1990s. This collection
includes powerful, moving and honest depictions of the campaign, in which Emma
played an integral role, exploring the ways in which language reaches us, saves
us, or fails to convince us.