What Nature

Poetry that grapples with the intersection of natural and cultural crises.In an age of record-breaking superstorms and environmental degradation, What Nature seeksthrough poetryto make sense of how we interact with and are influenced by nature.

Shifting its focus from what has already been lost to what lies ahead, What Nature rejects the sentimentality of traditional nature poetry. Instead, its texts expose and resist the global iniquities that create large-scale human suffering, a world where climate change disproportionately affects the poorest communities. The intersection of natural and cultural criseslike Standing Rock's fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline and the water crisis in Flint, Michiganare confronted head on. These poems, lyric essays, and hybrid works grapple with political unrest, refugeeism, and resource exploitation, transforming the genre of ecopoetics.

ContributorsKaveh Akbar,...