Eco Poetry: the Political and the Personal
‘My soul has grown deep like the rivers.’ – Langston Hughes
We live in a time when a lack of PPE has led to suffering in British care homes, when officials have been slow to offer reasons for the disproportionate BAME deaths due to Covid-19, when the term BAME has been used to hide the lack of Black representation in government, when the Washington NFL team has been forced to change its insulting name and when a plaque that honoured a slave trader has been removed from Britain’s beloved Brecon. With all these events in mind, the poet Marvin Thompson has asked himself: 'Who needs eco poetry?' His answer: 'We all do!'
In this open and inclusive workshop, we will generate poems that connect our natural environment (St Andrews’ seagulls, polluted Highland lochs, Siberia’s wildfires…) to our personal politics and our personal lives. We will take inspiration from eco poems written by a range of poets. This range of cultural and social perspectives will challenge our ideas of what eco poetry is, what political poetry could be and what personal poetry might be. The poems that we create during and after this workshop will connect us more deeply to our environment and to ourselves.
This workshop will take place on Zoom.
In association with Poetry Wales
