The Anthropocene Lyric is an interdisciplinary extension to studies of space and place. Responding to the cultural and environmental crises the term ’Anthropocene’ shoulders, the book’s
purpose is to pose a single question: how to rethink our place on this planet through poetry. Tom Bristow takes the work of three contemporary poets—John Burnside, John Kinsella and Alice
Oswald—to reveal how an environmental poetics of place is of significant relevance for the Anthropocene: a geological marker asking us to think radically of the human as one part of the
more-than-human world. This study unpacks the (bio)politics of representation in its emphasis on place perception; it revisits ontological dualism to highlight human and non-human
interdependency; and it points towards the idea of Anthropocene emotions, less clearly defined in existing literature. Ultimately, the affective synthesis of people, planet and place invites
us to consider a new formation in lyric poetry.
