Alice Oswald: Voyaging in Anthropocene Waters

Critics have often interpreted Alice Oswald’s poetry as place-based. Yet this chapter reveals that Oswald’s recent work develops cosmopolitan environmental dimensions. From plastic in the sea to polluting aviation, Oswald’s work is shown to be cognisant of local and worldwide environmental issues. Building on theorists who have analysed how the Anthropocene affects river-systems and oceans, and who have placed Oswald’s work in the context of ‘deep time,’ this chapter examines how Oswald creates shifts in scale from the microscopic to the planetary, and how such shifts are conveyed in poetic forms that are often hybrid and experimental. Deploying the work of Donna Haraway, Catriona Sandilands, and others, the chapter analyses Oswald’s work with reference to theories of ecological entanglement, river-systems, gender, and the trans-corporeal, and the focus on oceans that some have termed the ‘blue humanities.’ The chapter also highlights how the poetry community has called on Oswald to write climate change poetry and poetry about extinctions and to judge a prominent award for ecopoetry.