How might poetry respond to the current climate crisis and the desperate situation in which we now find ourselves? How can it convey a sense of urgency without paralysing us with anxiety? It is a difficult balance. Kate Simpson in her introduction to Out of Time describes the book as ‘engag[ing] with the power of poetry to ask questions, subvert expectations and raise awareness’. She also reminds us (quoting Roger Robinson) that it is the poet’s job ‘to translate unspeakable things on the page’. As Mary Jean Chan says of the world of the ‘still-too young’ in her poem ‘One Breath’, it is ‘too tragic for / silence’.

There have been several anthologies of eco-poetry published this year, including Seren’s ambitiously titled 100 Poems to Save the Planet and The Ecopoetry Anthology (of American poems) published by Trinity University Press. The Seren anthology includes work by poets from Britain and elsewhere, The Ecopoetry Anthology has a longer historical reach than Out of Time, but Simpson’s book has a sense of catching the zeitgeist.

The fifty poems in this anthology offer a variety of responses, forms and perspectives. Newer voices mingle with more familiar ones. The poems have been grouped under the headings Emergency, Grief, Transformation, Work and Rewilding. (This list might also reflect the journey we have to make in order to deal with the present state of the world.) Their concerns range from overflowing landfill sites, poisoned rivers and frightened children to questions of responsibility, physical work/action and an imagined future in which ...