Nature Poetry: Writing and Connecting with the Natural World
5 minutes read
Karen McCarthy Woolf, tutor on Faber Academy’s Nature Poems in the 21st Century course, explores the power of nature poetry to connect, reflect and inspire change.
What is Nature Poetry?
I like to think of nature poetry as a communication with the more-than-human. Nature is awe-inspiring, and when we stop to listen, to really look and to feel, it can be calming, or even transformational. Living busy lives, with our screens and technology, it’s easy to hurry past the trees, the birds, plants and animals who share the planet with us. For me the best nature poems are in dialogue with the world around us – they don’t necessarily seek to centre the self, or the human, but are open to multiple perspectives and experiences.
My Journey into Writing Nature Poetry
My first collection, An Aviary of Small Birds, was a book of elegies. Trying to make sense of multiple bereavements, including the loss of a baby son, made me consider my own mortality and the fragility of life on earth. I felt better when I was on, in or near water – swimming or simply looking out to sea. But you can’t contemplate the ocean without considering what we as humans are doing to it. I travelled to a few islands, including Lanzarote, as a land-based artist in support of Exxpedition – an all-women’s transatlantic sailing mission exploring the impacts of microplastics on human and marine endocrine systems. Many of those poems are in my second collection Seasonal Disturbances. In that first book I was trying to make an intimate loss universal through a natural lens; in the second I was attempting to make a universal loss – that of nature itself – feel intimate.
The Importance of Nature Poetry in Today’s World
I think of nature poetry, and particularly eco poetry, as an activism of the heart. If a poem can make us connect through a sense of witness we will feel more empathic, it can make us care. That care can make us change and demand change from the government and corporations who must be held to account. But the poem itself may not need to be political in its content – the power of the nature poem lies in deepening our understanding of our place in a system of which humanity is only a composite and recent part. Everyone deserves access to nature and leisure time in which to enjoy it, whether we are here in the UK or in the global south where many of the impacts of climate are more intense.
Must-Read Nature Poets and Books to Explore
The lyric greats are always a go-to: Heaney and Walcott and Louise Glück spring instantly to mind. You might also read the works of Mimi Khalvati or alternatively Joy Harjo, who gives an indigenous perspective on how all creatures are our relatives. John Clare’s bird poems are unique – for a modern take you could read Mona Arshi’s translations of birdsong into Punjabi, which she wrote while in residence at Cley in Norfolk. Tim Cresswell’s book Soil and A. R. Ammons’ Garbage give new insight into what nature might be. Camille Dungy is an African American poet whose writing and anthology Black Nature reconsiders our relationship with the land. Jason Allen-Paisant, Hannah Copley, Pascale Petit. The list could go on!
Writing Exercise for Aspiring Nature Poets
Write a nature journal. Take ten minutes every day to record a moment in nature. If you don’t have a garden or a park nearby, then simply make a note of what nature is from the top of a bus, or on your way to grab a sandwich for lunch. Pay attention to all your senses and try to always include at least three sounds. It’s something we forget, but nature and animals have their own noises and communication systems. Think also of the season: you might want to focus in on a very small frame and record it throughout the year, as if with a photo. But don’t take a photo! See what happens when you only have words.
About the Author
Born in London to English and Jamaican parents, Dr Karen McCarthy Woolf FRSL writes poetry, essays, memoir and fiction. She is co-editor of Nature Matters (Faber, 2025, with Mona Arshi) and her experimental verse novel Top Doll (Dialogue, 2024) is a TS Eliot Prize shortlisted, Guardian Poetry Book of the Year. A Fellow of the Complete Works, she is the winner of the Jerwood/RSL Poetry Award for England (2024), a postdoctoral Fulbright Scholar and her second collection Seasonal Disturbances, explores urban nature, the city and the sacred. She teaches Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London and is the tutor on Faber Academy’s Nature Poems in the 21st Century course.
Discover the craft of nature poetry in Faber Academy’s Nature Poems in the 21st Century course, beginning 17 February. In this one-week intensive course, Karen McCarthy Woolf will guide the group through a series of close readings, generative exercises and discussion. Over the five days, you will focus on various poetic forms, literary techniques, strategies and interventions, as well as drawing on other mediums such as visual art and music.
You’ll also take your writing out of Faber Academy’s classrooms and visit a gallery, to reflect and respond to how other artistic forms are responding to ecological breakdown, and how this can inform your own work. Find out more.
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