Poetry, ecocriticism and labour: the work of writing and reading

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article explores how the social and environmental critique of industrial labour found in John Ruskin’s ‘The Nature of Gothic’ might inform ecocritical approaches to creativity and making in contemporary poetry. I consider intersections between work, creativity and the environment, as they relate to the processes of writing and reading a poem. I relate Ruskin’s emphasis on the freedom of the artist, engagement with nature, and organic methods of composition, to the ways in which the modern poets W.S. Graham, Alice Oswald and Susan Stewart talk about the act of writing. I discuss how both writing and reading are emergent processes and suggest how ecocriticism might engage with this conception of the poet and the poem.