Edited by John Burnside and Maurice Riordan
2004

ISBN 978 1 903080 00 9

Available in Aus/NZ from Eleanor Brasch Enterprises

Wild Reckoning is an anthology inspired by the fortieth anniversary of Rachel Carson’s controversial and prophetic book Silent Spring, which warned against the indiscriminate use of pesticides and its consequences for the environment. The anthology features new poems commissioned from leading poets – including Seamus Heaney, Andrew Motion and Mark Doty – which are the fruit of discussions with scientists such as Richard Fortey and John Sulston. It also brings to the fore poems, both contemporary and from the past, which, although belonging to the great tradition of English nature poetry, express a concern for the fragility of living things.

Poetry Book Society Special Commendation
Selected on Desert Island Discs by Sir David King, the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser

‘A world without birdsong would be like a world without poets, which may be why so many of the major poets of our time have come to see that theirs is an ecological art.’ Jonathan Bate

John Burnside has published eight books of poetry, of which the most recent is The Light Trap, (Jonathan Cape, 2002). His novels include The Dumb House, (Cape 1996) and Living Nowhere, (Cape, 2003). He teaches creative writing and a course in literature and ecology at the University of St Andrews.

Maurice Riordan has published two collections of poetry, A Word from the Loki and Floods (Faber and Faber, 1995 and 2000). He is the editor, with Jon Turney, of A Quark for Mister Mark: 101 Poems about Science and teaches creative writing at Imperial College London.