Introduction

Climate change, extinction, ocean acidification, nuclear weapons and waste: life on our planet is facing unprecedented threats. This book argues that the idea of the Anthropocene - the contested concept that human beings have become a geological force - encourages us to rethink the scale, scope, and form of environmental poetry. Poets, artists, activists and scientists are coming together to find new ways of writing about the Anthropocene. The idea of the Anthropocene also offers us new ways of reading poems. Taking Pascale Petit's poem 'The Anthropocene' as its starting point, this Introduction begins to explore poetry that engages with our time of accelerating environmental change.