Ecology & Poetry

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

What does it mean to ‘look at the birds of the air’ and ‘consider the lilies of the field’ in the age of the climate crisis and ‘eco-anxiety’? Can writing and reading poetry be a way of cultivating ecological virtue? In the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus exhorts his followers to ‘look at the birds’ and ‘consider the lilies’ as an antidote to humanity’s proclivity toward self-consuming anxieties and divisions of the heart. This passage plays a significant role in Pope Francis’s two encyclicals addressing the climate crisis, urging that ‘care for our common home’ cannot be addressed by technological inventiveness or scientific advances only, but demands a conversion in the ‘attitude of the heart’ and the cultivation of ‘a serene attentiveness’ (Laudate Si, p226; cf. Laudate Deum, p1). This contemplative (re)turn to nature or the more-than-human world is defined by Douglas Christie as a way of ‘liv[ing] in the world as a healing presence, attentive and responsive to the lives of other beings and capable of helping to reknit the torn fabric of existence.’ He brings a distinctively Catholic tradition of contemplation into dialogue with (primarily American) 19th-20th century poets This course aims to extend these ‘notes toward a contemplative ecology’ as an ecocritical lens for reading British ecopoetry from the late 19th to early 21st centuries. The course will be structured by exploration of six aspects of contemplative ecological practice: Seeking; Sight; Silence; Sacrament; Song; and Sacrifice. Students will have opportunity to engage both scriptural and theological sources for understanding this contemplative ecological lens, including Matthew 6, Pseudo-Dionysius, Pope Francis and Douglas Christie. These will be read alongside works by British poets who have been explicitly shaped by a Catholic understanding of nature as created and sacramental, including Gerard Manley Hopkins, David Jones, and Peter Larkin, as well as works by British ecopoets who insightfully challenge, illumine or expand this tradition such as Alice Oswald, W. S. Graham, Colin Simms and Helen MacDonald.