Tweetspeak Poetry

  • Home
  • FREE prompts
  • Earth Song
  • Every Day Poems—Subscribe! ✨
  • Teaching Tools
  • Books, Etc.
  • Patron Love

Paul Kingsnorth: The Poetry of the Future Landscape

By Glynn Young 4 Comments

Welsh River Paul Kingsnorth
British writer Paul Kingsnorth is best known for two novels, Beast and The Wake, and a collection of essays, Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist. I’ve read and enjoyed Beast; it is a novel of frequent run-on sentences and no quotation marks, about a man living alone in a landscape devoid of people but with people’s artifacts remaining. I’ve started The Wake three times, this novel of an Anglo-Saxon landowner seeking revenge on Norman invaders. It’s partially written in Kingsnorth’s version of Old English; it also lacks quotation marks and capital letters. It was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2014, and I’m determined to make a fourth attempt to read it.

Paul Kingsnorth

Paul Kingsnorth

This unconventional form for his novels is of a piece with Kingsnorth’s environmental philosophy, articulated in a statement called The Dark Mountain Manifesto written with Dougald Hine in 2009. The manifesto serves as a kind of constitution for the Dark Mountain Project, self-described as “an international network of writers and artists searching for new stories for an age of upheaval.” It is a dark mountain for a dark view of what the future holds, coupled with what that future will require if individuals are to survive.

The manifesto is a statement employing both prose and poetry, summarized in eight principles. This first principle is “We live in a time of social, economic and ecological unravelling. All around us are signs that our whole way of living is already passing into history. We will face this reality honestly and learn how to live with it.” This idea of unraveling threads its way through all of Kingsnorth’s books. If you look for connections to the beliefs of the more radical environmentalists like Edward Abbey, you will find them. His Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist and Other Essays (2017) provides a nonfiction approach to his philosophy.

These ideas of unraveling and radical environmentalism can also be found in Kingsnorth’s poetry. He’s published two collections, Kidland: And Other Poems (2011) and Songs from the Blue River (2018). Compared to his novels, each poetry collection is much more accessible: they use a familiar form (free verse) and capital letters and punctuation.

Both are rather slender volumes of 30 poems each, with a long title poem dominating. “Kidland” is a 14-page poem about Sarah, a woman from the south (or civilized England), meeting Roland, a man of the north (or uncivilized moorland). They meet and talk, they share a drink, and violence ensues. No one dies, but the woman returns to the south. Neither comes out of the experience “wiser,” but both eventually understand what has happened, and the world is unraveling.

Another poem from Kidland has a similar theme.

Something in the air

Kidland Paul KingsnorthThe horsemen are riding in the West.
Through the winter woods their hounds are calling
as mist rises in bands between the birches.

There is a heavy, heartless beauty anchored
in the black soils of Europe,
silent and uncaring, overlooked
by its busy patrons, waiting
as the Earth turns towards the dark.
We have learned much about ourselves
and little about each other and now
there is something in the air.
Search for it in the soft fire of an autumn dawn –
you will see nothing, yet your future
is held in trust by the seas.

At the edge of the woods a black shape
bursts from the trees and panics
across the frost white field.

In Songs from the Blue River, the 10-page title poem is a kind of Book of Genesis epic, using a number of elements from the creation story to describe the origins of technological culture. It’s a creation story with the seeds of its own destruction embedded in it.

The poems are related thematically; here is Kingsnorth standing at the end of that creation story described in the title poem.

Free black earth

Songs from the River Paul KingsnorthIt came and sang in me in winter
when the light was low
and I was in the black fields
with frost across my shins
and the stubble of the corn gone white.

And when I turned away
and headed slowly home
towards the reckoned plastic of my home
I couldn’t stomach anything
I couldn’t look at anyone. I only hid
and dreamed of all the wreckage of my world
heaped up and burned to hell
so I could stand and breathe again
on free black earth.

In both volumes, Kingsnorth uses the imagery of winter, a dead time, to signify the ending of culture and society as we know it. You can frame it as a pessimistic view of the future or an optimistic view of what will be required to be part of that future. As in the novel Beast, Kingsnorth’s poetry is continually looking at the landscape, the landscape of the future superimposed on the landscape of the past.

Related:

Dougald Hine and Paul Kingsnorth discuss the Dark Mountain Project (2014)

My review of Beast by Paul Kingsnorth

Photo by Algy O’Connell, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Glynn Young, author of Poetry at Work and the novels Dancing Priest, A Light Shining, Dancing King, and the newly published Dancing Prophet.

Browse more book reviews

Browse more poets and poems

__________________________

How to Read a Poem by Tania Runyan How to Read a Poem uses images like the mouse, the hive, the switch (from the Billy Collins poem)—to guide readers into new ways of understanding poems. Anthology included.

“I require all our incoming poetry students—in the MFA I direct—to buy and read this book.”

—Jeanetta Calhoun Mish

Buy How to Read a Poem Now!

  • Author
  • Recent Posts
Glynn Young
Glynn Young
Editor and Twitter-Party-Cool-Poem-Weaver at Tweetspeak Poetry
Glynn Young lives in St. Louis where he retired as the team leader for Online Strategy & Communications for a Fortune 500 company. Glynn writes poetry, short stories and fiction, and he loves to bike. He is the author of the Civil War romance Brookhaven, as well as Poetry at Work and the Dancing Priest Series. Find Glynn at Faith, Fiction, Friends.
Glynn Young
Latest posts by Glynn Young (see all)
  • Poets and Poems: L.L. Barkat and “Beyond the Glass” - May 22, 2025
  • A History of Children’s Stories: “The Haunted Wood” by Sam Leith - May 20, 2025
  • World War II Had Its Poets, Too - May 15, 2025

Filed Under: article, Nature Poems, Poems, poetry, poetry reviews, Poets

Try Every Day Poems...

Comments

  1. L.L. Barkat says

    October 23, 2018 at 7:50 am

    Oh, that photo! I just want to live in it. Beautiful choice, Glynn.

    (Hard poetry, this. I like that you balanced it with a photographic image that seems like something imperviously lovely that we can “feel…in the deep heart’s core.”)

    Reply
  2. Maureen says

    October 23, 2018 at 11:20 am

    What evocative, dystopian poems! And yet Kingsnorth can still imagine that “free black earth” so fecund and what can “sing to me in winter”.

    Reply
  3. Will Willingham says

    October 23, 2018 at 10:31 am

    I like this idea that an optimism in this time requires such a stark realism. 🙂

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Paul Brookes – A Poetry Champion Who Writes Poetry | says:
    October 6, 2020 at 5:00 am

    […] John Burnside (Havergey), Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls), and Paul Kingsnorth (Beast, The Wake, Kidland: Poems and Songs from the Blue North: Poems) write fiction. You find an awareness of things coming apart, our fears of life not working like it […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Take How to Read a Poem

Get the Introduction, the Billy Collins poem, and Chapter 1

get the sample now

Welcome to Tweetspeak

New to Tweetspeak Poetry? Start here, in The Mischief Café. You're a regular? Check out our May Menu

Patron Love

❤️

Welcome a little patron love, when you help keep the world poetic.

The Graphic Novel

"Stunning, heartbreaking, and relevant illustrations"

Callie Feyen, teacher

read a summary of The Yellow Wallpaper

meet The Yellow Wallpaper characters

How to Write Poetry

Your Comments

  • Donna Hilbert on Poets and Poems: L.L. Barkat and “Beyond the Glass”
  • L.L. Barkat on Poets and Poems: L.L. Barkat and “Beyond the Glass”
  • Poets and Poems: L.L. Barkat and “Beyond the Glass” - Tweetspeak Poetry on Love, Etc.: Poems of Love, Laughter, Longing & Loss
  • Glynn on World War II Had Its Poets, Too

Featured In

We're happy to have been featured in...

The Huffington Post

The Paris Review

The New York Observer

Tumblr Book News

Stay in Touch With Us

Categories

Learn to Write Form Poems

How to Write an Acrostic

How to Write a Ballad

How to Write a Catalog Poem

How to Write a Ghazal

How to Write a Haiku

How to Write an Ode

How to Write a Pantoum

How to Write a Rondeau

How to Write a Sestina

How to Write a Sonnet

How to Write a Villanelle

5 FREE POETRY PROMPTS

Get 5 FREE inbox poetry prompts from the popular book How to Write a Poem

Shakespeare Resources

Poetry Classroom: Sonnet 18

Common Core Picture Poems: Sonnet 73

Sonnet 104 Annotated

Sonnet 116 Annotated

Character Analysis: Romeo and Juliet

Character Analysis: Was Hamlet Sane or Insane?

Why Does Hamlet Wait to Kill the King?

10 Fun Shakespeare Resources

About Shakespeare: Poet and Playwright

Top 10 Shakespeare Sonnets

See all 154 Shakespeare sonnets in our Shakespeare Library!

Explore Work From Black Poets

About Us

  • • A Blessing for Writers
  • • Our Story
  • • Meet Our Team
  • • Literary Citizenship
  • • Poet Laura
  • • Poetry for Life: The 5 Vital Approaches
  • • T. S. Poetry Press – All Books
  • • Contact Us

Write With Us

  • • 5 FREE Poetry Prompts-Inbox Delivery
  • • 30 Days to Richer Writing Workshop
  • • Poetry Prompts
  • • Submissions
  • • The Write to Poetry

Read With Us

  • • All Our Books
  • • Book Club
  • • Every Day Poems—Subscribe! ✨
  • • Literacy Extras
  • • Poems to Listen By: Audio Series
  • • Poet-a-Day
  • • Poets and Poems
  • • 50 States Projects
  • • Charlotte Perkins Gilman Poems Library
  • • Edgar Allan Poe Poems Arts & Experience Library
  • • William Blake Poems Arts & Experience Library
  • • William Shakespeare Sonnet Library

Celebrate With Us

  • • Poem on Your Pillow Day
  • • Poetic Earth Month
  • • Poet in a Cupcake Day
  • • Poetry at Work Day
  • • Random Acts of Poetry Day
  • • Take Your Poet to School Week
  • • Take Your Poet to Work Day

Gift Ideas

  • • Every Day Poems
  • • Our Shop
  • • Everybody Loves a Book!

Connect

  • • Donate
  • • Blog Buttons
  • • By Heart
  • • Shop for Tweetspeak Fun Stuff

Copyright © 2025 Tweetspeak Poetry · FAQ, Disclosure & Privacy Policy