Nature Matters

The rise of nature writing as a cultural phenomenon is nothing new. Yet it has stirred questions relating to whose voices are privileged and heard in a space predominantly occupied by Western European traditions and writers.
In Nature Matters, poets Mona Arshi and Karen McCarthy Woolf seek to redress this imbalance. Their genre-defining anthology considers nature poetry from its historical roots to more recent flourishings, presenting how Black and Asian poets of past and present are decolonising this space. Committed to ecological enquiry and formal experiment, it explores fundamental themes such as climate crisis and the Anthropocene; protest and radical empathy; future ecologies; urban nature and the countryside; solitude and alienation. Revitalising conversations surrounding environmentalism and ecopoetics, this new gathering of voices is both urgent and inspirational.

Mona Arshi's poetry collections include Small Hands (2015) and Dear Big Gods (2019). She was poet in residence at Cley Marshes Norfolk, in 2020.
Born in London to English and Jamaican parents, Karen McCarthy Woolf's collections include An Aviary of Small Birds (2014) and Seasonal Disturbances (2017).