Startling by Linda France

Linda France’s tenth collection is galvanising, comprising poems written from, and into, the fabric of the sixth mass extinction. Here, beginnings end and endings begin, as we leap across time and space and encounter the inter-connected nature of emergency. France harnesses the power of innate ecological awareness, refreshing both individual and collective imaginations in order to create a lasting synergy between nature and culture. Grounded in seasonal fieldwork and close observation, these poems call for a rewilding of the self as well as the landscape: a momentous task, that, as France demonstrates, can only be achieved through the radical act of tenderness.

Faber and New Writing North