The Anthropocene Lyric

This book takes the work of three contemporary poets John Burnside, John Kinsella and Alice Oswald to reveal how an environmental poetics of place is of significant relevance for the Anthropocene: a geological marker asking us to think radically of the human as one part of the more-than-human world.

This book takes the work of three contemporary poets John Burnside, John Kinsella and Alice Oswald to reveal how an environmental poetics of place is of significant relevance for the Anthropocene: a geological marker asking us to think radically of the human as one part of the more-than-human world.

Modernism and the Anthropocene explores twentieth-century literature as it engages with the non-human world across a range of contexts. From familiar modernist works by D.H. Lawrence and Hart Crane to still-emergent genres like comics and speculative fiction, this volume tackles a series of related questions regarding how best to understand humanity’s increasing domination of the natural world.

This book outlines the development and perspectives of the Anthropocene concept by Paul J. Crutzen and his colleagues from its inception to its implications for the sciences, humanities, society and politics. The main text consists primarily of articles from peer-reviewed scientific journals and other scholarly sources. It comprises selected articles on the Anthropocene published by Paul J. Crutzen and a selection of related articles, mostly but not exclusively by colleagues with whom he collaborated closely. • In the year 2000 Nobel Laureate Paul J. Crutzen proposed the Anthropocene concept as a new epoch in Earth’s history • Comprehensive collection of articles on the Anthropocene by Paul J. Crutzen and his colleagues• Unique primary research literature and Crutzen’s comprehensive bibliography• Paul Crutzen’s scientific investigations into human influences on atmospheric chemistry and physics, the climate and the Earth system, leading to the conception of the Anthropocene• Reflections on the Anthropocene and its implications• Bibliometric review of the spread of the use of the Anthropocene concept in the Natural and Social Sciences, Humanities and Law

Perhaps no concept has become dominant in so many fields as rapidly as the Anthropocene. Meaning "The Age of Humans," the Anthropocene is the proposed name for our current geological epoch, beginning when human activities started to have a noticeable impact on Earth’s geology and ecosystems. Long embraced by the natural sciences, the Anthropocene has now become commonplace in the humanities and social sciences, where it has taken firm enough hold to engender a thoroughgoing assessment and critique. Why and how has the geological concept of the Anthropocene become important to the humanities? What new approaches and insights do the humanities offer? What narratives and critiques of the Anthropocene do the humanities produce? What does it mean to study literature of the Anthropocene? These are the central questions that this collection explores. Each chapter takes a decidedly different humanist approach to the Anthropocene, from environmental humanities to queer theory to race, illuminating the important contributions of the humanities to the myriad discourses on the Anthropocene. This volume is designed to provide concise overviews of particular approaches and texts, as well as compelling and original interventions in the study of the Anthropocene. Written in an accessible style free from disciplinary-specific jargon, many chapters focus on well-known authors and texts, making this collection especially useful to teachers developing a course on the Anthropocene and students undertaking introductory research. This collection provides truly innovative arguments regarding how and why the Anthropocene concept is important to literature and the humanities.

Defined as an ecological epoch in which humans have the most impact on the environment, the Anthropocene poses challenging questions to literary and cultural studies. If, in the Anthropocene, the distinction between nature and culture increasingly collapses, we have to rethink our division between historiography and natural history, as well as notions of the subject and of agency since the Enlightenment. This anthology collects papers from literary and cultural studies that address various issues surrounding the topic. Even though the new epoch seems to require a collective self-understanding as a unified species, readings of the Anthropocene and conceptualizations of human-nature relationships largely differ in Anglophone literatures and cultures. These differing perspectives are reflected in the structure of this book, which is divided into five separate sections: the introductory part familiarizes the reader with the concept and the challenges it poses for the humanities in general and for literary and cultural studies in particular, and the three following sections combine broader, more theoretical, essays with in-depth critical readings of US, Canadian, and Australian representations of the Anthropocene in literature. The final part moves beyond literature to include media theoretical perspectives and discussions of photography and cinema in the Anthropocene.

Modern Ecopoetry: Reading the Palimpsest of the More-Than-Human World explores the fruitful dialogue between poetry and the more-than-human world from various critical standpoints in modern English-writing poets from diverse backgrounds such as the USA, the UK, Canada, India, and Pakistan.

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.