Earth Shattering by Neil Astley
Lines up a chorus of over two hundred poems addressing environmental destruction. Whether the subject - or target - is the whole earth or landscapes, homelands and cities (polluting rivers and seas, fouling the air, felling trees and forests), there are poems here to alert and alarm anyone willing to read or listen.
Any poetry anthology, in any field, inevitably owes something to those anthologies that have gone before itBut with Earth Shattering, Neil Astley has set out to do something rather different – not just moving us well beyond the canon of "nature poetry" (which a number of other anthologies have also sought to do over the last few years), but by digging much deeper into the complexities of the historical relationship between humankind and the living Earth that sustains us, reflected in a highly contemporaneous and politically aware way. That will certainly appeal to environmental activists who will already be familiar with many of the poets featured in Earth Shattering. But they will discover a whole lot more than this in this astonishingly eclectic and wide-ranging anthology. -- Jonathon Porritt * Sofia *
Neil Astley is editor of Bloodaxe Books, which he founded in 1978. His books include novels, poetry collections and anthologies, most notably those in Bloodaxe's Staying Alive anthology series: Staying Alive (2002), Being Alive (2004), Being Human (2011), and Staying Human (2020), a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation; and four collaborations with Pamela Robertson-Pearce, Soul Food (2007) and Soul Feast (2024), and the DVD-books In Person: 30 Poets (2008) and In Person: World Poets (2017). He has published two eco-novels, The End of My Tether (2002), which was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award, and The Sheep Who Changed the World (2005). He received an Eric Gregory Award for his poetry, was given a D.Litt from Newcastle University for his work with Bloodaxe Books, and in 2018 was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He also guest-edited a transatlantic all-poetry issue of the American literary journal Ploughshares, the first such issue in its 43-year history. He lives in the Tarset Valley of Northumberland, England.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781852247744 |
| ISBN 10 | 1852247746 |
| Title | Earth Shattering |
| Author | Neil Astley |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Bloodaxe Books Ltd |
| Year published | 2007-10-31 |
| Number of pages | 256 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |