KATE ELSPETH SIMPSON

–––About

I am an editor, writer, poet, and critic, writing through extinction.

–––Editing

I am the former Associate Editor of the international arts and culture magazine Aesthetica (2016-2022). During my editorship I produced over forty single editions of the magazine, commissioning, writing, and editing features on the likes of Björk, Olafur Eliasson, Ai Weiwei, and Edward Burtynsky, working alongside curators at MoMA, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tate, The V&A and the Guggenheim, amongst others.

I have edited independently for renowned poetry publishers including Faber, Valley Press, AMBIT and Magma, commissioning and editing work with TS Eliot and Forward prize-winning poets including Jason Allen-Paisant, Seán Hewitt, Linda France, Mary Jean Chan, Zaffar Kunial, Karen McCarthy Woolf, Fiona Benson, and Raymond Antrobus. 

Titles I have published have been praised for their “close focus on the botanical and the geological”, (Irish Times) and their “deep communion” with nature (Poetry Society). My work has been described by the Times Literary Supplement as “determinedly radical and iconoclastic… with a tautness and focus not typical of the genre”. 

My anthology, Out of Time: Poetry from the Climate Emergency (2021, Valley Press), was a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation – lauded as the ‘definitive anthology for this decisive decade’ – and listed as one of the Guardian/Observer’s Books of the Year. As a collaboration with, and celebration of, Friends of the Earth’s 50^th anniversary, the title featured cover artwork and an introductory note from principal research scientist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Science, Ed Hawkins, MBE, and was endorsed by climate scientist Mark Maslin MBE, as a book which “empowers us to change our world,” as well as by Daljit Nagra, Chair of the Society of Literature, who described it as a “transformative read”.