This award-winning ecopoetry anthology was published to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Friends of the Earth, featuring 50 poetic voices from across the globe. Out of Time was a 2021 Poetry Book Society Special Commendation, lauded as ‘the definitive anthology for this decisive decade’.
ABOUT
ABOUT
The Anthropocene is defined by emergency; it is an artificial geological epoch of our own design, with disastrous ecological effects rippling outwards across the entire globe. Out of Time engages with the power of poetry to ask questions, subvert expectations and raise awareness. Now is the time to truly elucidate: to read more widely, to write more expansively, and pass on, more passionately than ever, the most important message of all.
Edited by Kate Simpson and featuring original work from the likes of Caroline Bird, Inua Ellams, Pascale Petit, Karen McCarthy Woolf, Rachael Allen, Raymond Antrobus and Mary Jean Chan, this collection of 50 poems is galvanising – offering compressed worlds, ecosystems and alternate realities, ready to be opened up, expanded and explored.
ENDORSEMENTS & REVIEWS
‘Out of Time presents an excoriating critique of Earth’s ongoing encounter with humankind – the language animal – in poems that charm, disrupt, convince, cohere and break apart. In such an ingeniously conceived and curated anthology, the range of forms and voices is impressive: from elegies and odes to fractured protest songs and poems that read like reports from the front. Romantic tropes about nature are dropped in favour of strange, startling images from the porous borders between the human and non-human worlds. This is vital work for a future that is already here.’ Tom Chivers, Cape Farewell’s first Climate Poet-in-Residence.
‘With Out of Time, Kate Simpson has not only collected some of the most exciting voices in ecopoetry and brought them together in this extraordinary anthology, but she has written an essay which articulates the glorious activism burning through every line in these poems. Here you will find transcendent articulations of limitless miracles of nature and conversely damning records of humanity’s greatest shame; the systematic and rapid destruction of our very life support system – planet earth. From the seas to the skies, from gutters to treetops these poems constitute a hugely important record of the most critical challenge faced by us all – that of climate crisis.’ Sally Carruthers, Executive Director Poetry School, Director the Laurel and Ginkgo Prizes for Nature and Ecopoetry
‘There are so many exciting poems in this anthology that are inspiring and built on the good poetics of fightback: of the upbeat mood to make more of life, to be kind, to be outward-looking, and to be worthy of this home on our planet. A transformative read.’ Daljit Nagra, Chair of the Royal Society of Literature
‘We are “Out Of Time”. The world needs to change. Words have power. Power to change. Poetry from the Climate Emergency challenges, inspires, and empowers us to change our world.’ Professor Mark Maslin author of How to Save Our Planet: The Facts (Penguin 2021)
‘The crisis of climate change has seen poets reaching for new expressions to alter the narrative about the challenge we all face. Out of Time: Poetry from the Climate Emergency is the best eco-themed anthology to emerge this year, with poems that are dynamic, elegiac and hopeful.’ Rishi Dastidar, The Guardian.
‘The breadth of this collection shows an array of affective methods that can lure readers into thinking critically about the conditions we live in now, hope for, and fear for – while painfully awake, planning or dreaming of better futures.’ Alison Scott, Resurgence & Ecologist.
‘The collection is clearly a labour of thought and love, and well worth exploring.’ Gale Burns, Poets for the Planet.
‘The ardency and urgency of this selection sets it apart from much of what is published about the living world.’ Sara Hudson, TLS.
kate elspeth simpson. 
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