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Tasmanian Literary Awards

Earth Dwellers by Kristen Lang (Giramondo Publishing)

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Earth Dwellers

The Anthropocene – what can poetry do in this epoch in the Earth’s history defined by human impact? With its immersion in powerful wilderness landscapes, Earth Dwellers challenges our human-centredness by embracing perspectives which set the intimate delicacy of life forms against time scales that go back millions of years. These are deep-breath poems, full of touch and awareness, consolidated by their commitment to the ecologies that envelop us. Asked where we come from, the poems speak not of nations or tribes but of mosses, mountains, oceans, birds. And asked where we are going, the poems refer not to rockets or recessions, but to the biome, a place where consumption is a relationship and not a right. This is ecopoetry – where the natural world is primary, and humans have to find their place in it, rather than the other way around.

Read an extract from the book

About the author

Kristen Lang moved from Melbourne to regional Tasmania as a child. She now lives in mountainous country in north-west Tasmania. In her writing, closeness and connection combine with a beyond-human view that celebrates ecological continuity. Her collection of poems and photographs Let me show you a ripple was self-published in 2008. In 2017, her poetry books SkinNotes and The Weight of Light were published by Walleah Press and Five Islands Press. The latter was longlisted for the 2019 Margaret Scott Award. Earth Dwellers, published in 2021 by Giramondo, was longlisted for the 2021 Laurel Prize.