“A Peremptory Adieu to Biodiversicals”: Ecological Decline and Experimentation in Peter Reading’s -273,15

Abstract

Peter Reading (1946-2011), pronounced as “the unofficial laureate of a decaying nation, Junk Britain” by Tom Paulin, has always been concerned with environmental deterioration, climate change, and decline of the species in many of his work from the 70s onwards. His poems of the new millennium advocate a more robust critique of the neo-liberal economic systems and human beings’ involvement in the current ecological crisis. Reading’s -273,15, [Absolute Zero], revisits his decades-long efforts to experiment with various poetic forms, registers and a grief-stricken tone presiding over most of his previous work with his suspicion of human language to convey the complexities of anthropocenic experience. Reading’s text combines his efforts not only to experiment with various poetic and non-poetic materials, registers, but also look for ways to cope with an approaching catastrophe. The verbal and visual collage pieces as the most frequently employed procedures in Reading’s poetry draw his poetry closer to the ‘entropological register’ Skinner puts forward and bring together the sources to show how Reading’s environmental agenda is conscious of its shortcomings. Drawing on Lynn Keller’s recent work on ecopoetics and the concept of the “self-conscious Anthropocene,” this paper aims to explore how Reading’s ecological agenda and experimental practices in -273,15 might forge an improved understanding of the connections between contemporary poetry and environmental justice.