Let’s drop the Hallmark card fantasies. Nature isn’t serene. It’s not here to cradle you while you write love letters to daffodils. Nature is carnivorous. It devours, spits you out, and doesn’t apologise. That’s what The Whiskey Tree: Untamed Nature (Wave 2) gets right: it strips away the artifice and reveals nature as it is—violent, raw, magnificent, and utterly indifferent to us. These poets don’t bow to the earth; they let it roar through them. This is ecopoetry that mauls.
What is Ecopoetry?
Ecopoetry is a form of poetry that engages directly with the natural world—its destruction, its resilience, and humanity’s place within it. It rejects idealised depictions of nature and instead confronts the raw, often brutal realities of environmental change. Poets like those featured in The Whiskey Tree turn weather, landscapes, and ecosystems into living, breathing characters that challenge human dominance and reveal nature’s enduring power.
If you want to get cosy with nature, this anthology isn’t your companion. But if you’re ready to look the storm in the face and feel the dirt in your lungs, then keep reading.
Nature as Predator: Ecopoetry’s Untamed Voice
Here’s the problem with most nature poetry: it frames the earth as an obedient backdrop, an endless supply of metaphors for human feelings. Aerfen by Lucy Heuschen rejects that idea.
‘Her beard sparkling, / fat belly to the sky’
This river isn’t serene; it’s gluttonous. It sparkles not for your amusement but because it’s full, satiated by whatever it’s consumed—animal, plant, human. You don’t picnic by this river; you pray it doesn’t notice you. This isn’t pastoral; it’s predatory.
Then there’s When it rained the Sahara by Mark Antony Owen:
‘The sky had never fallen / so physically – carried / time here so granularly‘
This is nature as a juggernaut. Sand carried by storms invades everything—your lungs, your clothes, your memories. It patterns your skin, reminds you that you’re small, temporary, and incapable of stopping what’s coming. The sandstorm doesn’t care about your plans or poems; it rewrites the world on its terms.
Poets on the Brink of Environmental Disaster: Witnessing Nature’s Collapse
Poetry is an act of witness, and in an era of environmental destruction, that means watching the earth break apart. But let’s be clear: this isn’t voyeurism. These poets don’t stand at a distance, sipping lattes while penning haikus about crumbling coastlines. They stand in the wreckage.
Take George Sandifer-Smith’s The Cavern Roof Collapsed & Left Us This:
‘Low tide brings a deeper chorus, / ripping round the tower to drag your ankles / with sand that lives and lives, and shrinks and lives‘
This sand isn’t static; it’s alive, persistent. It doesn’t just sit there waiting to be admired—it drags, pulls, and consumes. And when you’re gone, it keeps going. The ‘tower’ might be human-made, but the sand doesn’t care. It’s a reminder that nature endures long after we’re erased.
And then there’s Ecotone by Briony Collins:
‘Sleep casts seedlings into me / germinates backward, sprouts / green through canthi‘
This isn’t delicate growth; it’s invasive, relentless. It doesn’t ask permission to take root—it just does. The ‘canthi’ (corners of the eyes) suggest an almost parasitic invasion. Nature finds its way into the most unexpected places, even in decay, even in exhaustion. Growth here isn’t pretty—it’s survival at its most unrelenting.
Resilience Isn’t Pretty: How Nature Rebuilds on Its Own Terms
Here’s where the beauty of this anthology comes in: it doesn’t just dwell on collapse. It also gives you resilience, but not the Instagram kind with flower crowns and curated fields. This is resilience with teeth. It’s messy, it’s violent, and it doesn’t care whether or not you find it inspiring.
Take Els Ametllers by James McConachie. The poem unfolds in a landscape abandoned by humans, but it doesn’t mourn. Instead:
‘Came the cold, those three big snows… / from the fringe, there sprouted vivid prickling pines’
This isn’t redemption; it’s survival. Nature isn’t here to rebuild what we’ve destroyed—it’s here to take back the space we abandoned. The pines are vivid, prickling, and unapologetically alive. They don’t grow for us; they grow because they can.
And McConachie doesn’t stop there:
‘At end of life, / the trees’ belief is brightly bolting for the longing that is light‘
This is resilience stripped of sentimentality. Even at the edge of death, the trees are still clawing for light. It’s not pretty, but it’s breathtaking. This is what survival looks like—raw, desperate, and ferociously alive.
No Escape: How Ecopoetry Connects Us to Nature’s Chaos
The biggest lie we tell ourselves is that we’re separate from nature. That it’s out there somewhere, while we sit safely in here. Wrong. Nature isn’t just something we visit on weekends; it’s the air we breathe, the weather we endure, the sand that sticks to our skin no matter how much we wipe it off.
Mark Antony Owen nails this in When it rained the Sahara:
‘Come to remind us how close / we are, measured in weather. / Close the desert between us‘
This isn’t a metaphor—it’s a warning. The storms we create through climate change, deforestation, and greed don’t just belong to someone else’s backyard. The ‘desert’ is everywhere. The sandstorm comes for all of us, and we’re more connected than we care to admit.
And Romina Ramos’ Iberica drives the point home:
‘Feet submerged in water / become anchors‘
This isn’t water as escapism; it’s water as grounding. It’s a reminder that our survival is tied to the same forces we try to control. Nature doesn’t care about borders or hierarchies—it just is. And if we’re not paying attention, it’ll swallow us whole.
Pay Attention, or Get Swallowed Whole
Here’s the thing about The Whiskey Tree: it doesn’t care if you’re uncomfortable. It doesn’t care if you wanted poetry to be pretty. These poets didn’t write this to make you feel good—they wrote it to make you pay attention.
Nature isn’t waiting for us to catch up. It’s already moving forward, with or without us. These poems don’t just document that—they shout it in your face. This isn’t poetry that sits quietly on a shelf. This is poetry that screams, claws, and refuses to be ignored.
So stop writing polite nature poetry. Write the storms. Write the hunger. Write the sand that lives and shrinks and lives again. Write the f***ing truth. Because nature doesn’t care about you—it’s too busy surviving.