Kenyon Review EcoPoetry

“Literature and the Anthropocene” is the title of The Kenyon Review Editor’s Notes in the May/June 2016 issue. The term ‘anthropocene, Editor David H. Lynn explains, is “a term coined by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer in 2000 to denote the current epoch, ‘in which many geologically significant conditions and processes are profoundly altered by human activities’ . . . As one response to these vast and accelerating changes we offer in this issue a special section of EcoPoetry, work that self-consciously addresses the relationship between the human and the natural world, gathered by our poetry editor David Baker. This is the second iteration—last year’s received wide acclaim—and my intention is that it will be an ongoing feature in our pages.”

To further encourage the genre, the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop offers a nature writing session each summer. Collaborating with scientists at Kenyon College’s Brown Family Environmental Center, this workshop provides wrirters with guided scientific investigation, in labs and wetlands and woodland paths, along with time and strategies for writing. This nature writing workshop is one of several offered by the Kenyon Review.

[Cover art by Brett Ryder.]