Reviews

Ben Philipps

On ecopoetry

Justin Han. Funeral Feast (For Lanzhou Artists' Army) . 2021, handmade papers, acrylic, and oil on canvas (two panels), 84 × 72". Courtesy of the artist.

Rachael Allen. Kingdomland . Faber & Faber, 2019.

Rachael Allen. God Complex . Faber & Faber, 2024.

Isabel Galleymore. Baby Schema . Carcanet, 2024.

K. A. Hays. Anthropocene Lullaby . University of Chicago Press, 2022.

Daisy Lafarge. Life Without Air . Granta, 2020.

Chloë Proctor. Terra Forming . Broken Sleep, 2023.

Say there are two poetic traditions, which regard each other with a mixture of boredom, fear, and contempt. The first descends from the confessionalists of midcentury America: Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton. It can convey, or assume, a progressive social agenda — exemplified by Adrienne Rich and Sharon Olds — but in form hews to lyric convention, with identifiable speakers and displays of compressed emotion.…