In May 2023, my friend the Edinburgh-based poet Helen Boden and I gave an online talk to the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics, on Geopoetics and Poetry. While preparing it, we realised that although geopoetics has produced some very innovative and creative work in many other disciplines, and attracted attention from artists in many genres, poetry itself did not feature as strongly as might be expected. What was more, geopoeticians did not appear to be particularly aware of recent developments in eco-poetry, nature writing or writing about place, while many writers in those fields did not seem to be aware of the potential of geopoetics.

We felt that poetry would benefit from some focussed attention, while geopoeticians might appreciate more awareness of the diversity of poets writing currently, and the need to decolonialise the poetry canon. There is a lot going on in the fields of eco-poetry and place writing, and we feel that geopoetics, with its emphasis on getting outside traditional western ways of thinking and perceiving and centring our culture on awareness of the earth itself rather thatn traditional political or cultural constructs about it, might have something distinctive to add. This website is an attempt to keep this discussion going.

The first step was to launch our website Ceasing Never, which will publish articles, reviews and analysis. We have a core group of contributors whose work in this field is established. The good news is that the site is now LIVE, and the first two articles are up, so please look – see what is on offer, and join the discussion via the comments (They will be moderated, so it might take a day or so before they publish).