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An Ecopoetics of Agency
Writing with the Nonhuman in Modernist and Contemporary Poetry
An Ecopoetics of Agency
Writing with the Nonhuman in Modernist and Contemporary Poetry
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Description
Focusing on a category of poems from the Modernist and contemporary periods which give agency to nonhuman beings and texts themselves, Sarah Bouttier puts form, often neglected within ecocriticism, at the center of the definition of ecopoetics.
Grounding ecopoetics in posthumanist ontologies (new materialism, flat ontology and Latour's work on agency), Bouttier explores how the poems collapse the human/nonhuman divide and re-instil wonder at the nonhuman world.
By juxtaposing readings of Modernist poets such as D. H. Lawrence, Wallace Stevens and Marianne Moore with contemporary poets such as Les Murray, Pattiann Rogers, Alice Oswald and Kathleen Jamie, the book provides fresh insight into well-known works and offers a new perspective on contemporary ecopoetry.
Table of Contents
1. The Nonhuman as Agent
2. The Nonhuman as Poet
3. A Language for the Nonhuman
4. Creaturely Poems
Conclusion: A new and quiet sense of space
Notes
References
Product details

Published | 22 Jan 2026 |
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Format | Ebook (Epub & Mobi) |
Edition | 1st |
Extent | 224 |
ISBN | 9781350528383 |
Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
Series | Environmental Cultures |
Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
About the contributors
Reviews
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Through meticulous and sophisticated close readings, Sarah Bouttier's book demonstrates how poetry extends agency across human and nonhuman entities. Theorizing poems themselves as nonhuman creaturely agents, it makes a compelling case for poetry's crucial relevance for ecological thought.
Pieter Vermeulen, Professor of American and Comparative Literature, KU Leuven, Belgium