In Earth Prayers, Carol Ann Duffy selects nature poetry from across the ages, from John Clare to Lucille Clifton and Kathleen Jamie, that reflects the fragility of our world and the urgent need for thoughtful stewardship. In a show encompassing anger at greed and destruction, alongside celebration of the profound and joyful, Carol Ann complements her own writing with voices from around this small planet. The interplay between poetry and music from virtuoso John Sampson, who brings an incisive, engaging wit as well as sparkling and sparky tunes on diverse brass and woodwind instruments, creates a unique and inspiring evening.
The wonders of nature have inspired poets for centuries, stretching far back beyond the Romantics. Beautifully curated by Carol Ann Duffy, the poems in Earth Prayers span widely across time, but in their moments of joy, empathy or difference, even the earliest poems reveal a concern for the welfare of our planet. Duffy brings these early eco-poems into conversation with contemporary voices writing into the environmental crisis, and through this dialogue sounds a clarion call to cherish and defend the planet while we can.
From John Clare to Lucille Clifton to Kathleen Jamie, the poets collected inEarth Prayersspeak at times as stewards and ambassadors of the earth, at others in anger at those who would exploit nature, or to question their own part in its decline. And the earth speaks back: in Stephanie Pruitts Mississippi Gardens the soil bears witness to the worst of human history, while in Poem Jorie Graham relays the earths plea: remember me.
To encounter nature, these poems tell us, is to be humbled, to have our own smallness magnified by the presence of the sublime. Earth Prayers is a testament to the immense beauty of the natural world, and a challenging reminder of our place in the living skein / of which the world is woven.
