Poetry and the Anthropocene

Reviews / Votes

Sam Solnick has written a compellingly mobile, unpredictable and multi-dimensional study of contemporary poetry within the context of current debates about literature, ecology, systems theory and environmental crisis. It operates on two fronts. In the first place, Solnick offers a brilliant critique of modern thinking about ecology, ecopoetry, ecocriticism, and the poetry associated with it, provocatively rethinking current assumptions about environment-oriented poetry and theory. In the second, he offers scintillating and authoritative readings of three major contemporary poets no-one else would have dreamed of bracketing together: Ted Hughes, Derek Mahon and J.H. Prynne. Claiming that poetry is particularly useful for thinking about the 'biological, ecological and social systems important to the Anthropocene', Solnick has not only written a highly original study of the three poets in their intellectual contexts but a uniquely self-reflexive map of current thinking about the fate of the human, the natural and the ecological in our period of acute environmental crisis.

Hugh Haughton - University of York.

Sam Solnick has written an indispensable account of the concept of ecopoetry, its meanings, history, and vicissitudes, giving the term a sharp and valuable focus. Better than that, he has instantiated its force in informed, engaged close readings

Timothy Clark - Durham University

As Solnick says, we are living in an age when humanity has 'the capacity to disrupt (but not control) biological and ecological process'. This thoughtful and timely book addresses what it means to read and write poetry in this context

Robert Hampson FEA, FRSA
Professor of Modern Literature, Royal Holloway, University of London

As ecocriticism itself expands and contracts, drawing on but sometimes recoiling from other bodies of knowledge, it is increasingly difficult to map its theoretical twists and turns, or to map any one of its positions onto an effective praxis. The strength of Solnick's book lies in his ability to negotiate this sometimes self-contradictory field to offer careful and perceptive readings

British Society for Literature and Science

A wide-ranging, richly suggestive set of insights. Not only does Poetry and the Anthropocene offer a meticulous engagement with existing criticism in every chapter from the literature review onwards, but it also brings the same level of attention to bear on its primary materials, offering intelligent close readings of the poetry itself as well as thoughtfully curated selections from the archives. Overall, Solnick's conclusions underline how thoughtful, wide ranging and occasionally provocative his work is.

Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism

Poetry and the Anthropocene as a whole is a dense study, often working beyond the confines of what we might conventionally call the Humanities to probe poetic responses to climate change. Solnick's book is part of growing and important body of work that seeks to bring critical and theoretical insights to the study of ecologically-minded texts, and even to consider how apparently non-ecologically minded texts are enveloped by environmental concerns.

The Years Work in Critical and Cultural Theory

What Solnick achieves in this really quite remarkable study of contemporary poetry and its various eco- contexts is a sustained and illuminating analysis of how poets understand the complex relationship between organisms and their environment, in an age when human activity is modifying the very constitution of the Earth.

The Cambridge Quarterly, 2017

With the release of Sam Solnick's Poetry and the Anthropocene, the critical scene receives a major study, one which promises to be among the cornerstones of a discipline that is only now coming into its own.[...]The scope of his coverage is as superb as it is profound and aptly phrased [...] If criticism has any role to play in tackling the environmental crisis we are witnessing all around us, it is by being practised in precisely the manner which Solnick masterfully displays in his study

Wit Pietrzak, Text Matters

Poetry and the Anthropocene is an intellectually challenging work which not only appreciates the scale and complexity of the Anthropocene, but offers readings of Hughes, Mahon, and Prynne that are finely crafted poetic studies in their own right. It is a fine example of ecocriticism that conveys the ecological significance of the poems it reads, without forgetting why we read poems in the first place.

This Year's Work in English Studies