Birdsong for the Anthropocene. The Poetry of Peter Reading.

FAIN: HB-288540-23

Alexander M. Schlutz
CUNY Research Foundation, John Jay College (New York, NY 10019-1007)

Research and writing leading to a book on trauma and the environment in the works of English poet Peter Reading (1946-2011).

This project aims to establish the English poet Peter Reading (1946-2011) as an essential writer for our contemporary moment of environmental disaster. It joins a small number of studies published since 2015 that have taken on the work of sketching out a possible poetics for the Anthropocene, the controversially discussed designation for the current geo-historical epoch, in which human activity has become a driver of the earth system. It brings Reading's work in conversation with theoretical debates in the fields of Poetics, Ecocriticism, Animal Studies, Extinction Studies, and the trans-disciplinary discourse of the Environmental Humanities more broadly. I argue that Reading’s voice, so far overlooked in the scholarly debate, offers an important perspective in the emergent discourse in the Humanities about a possible poetics for a time in which human activity is causing the sixth mass extinction in the planet’s geological history.