‘We came to ask if you might heal the world.’ John Glenday

Poets have written about the wonder and beauty of the natural world for centuries. From John Clare to Charlotte Mew, from Gerard Manley Hopkins to Lucille Clifton, from Paula Meehan to Jorie Graham, the poets collected in Carol Ann Duffy’s anthology Earth Prayers discuss the eco-crisis, remind us of our place in the eco-system and ask us to cherish the planet we live on. Carol Ann will perform poems from the collection, alongside some of her own sublime nature poems. She will be accompanied by the musician John Sampson.

Carol Ann is a poet and playwright. Her collections include Standing Female Nude (1985), winner of a Scottish Arts Council Book Award; Selling Manhattan (1987), which won a Somerset Maugham Award; Mean Time (1993), which won the Whitbread Poetry Award; and Rapture (2005), which won the T. S. Eliot Prize. She was the first female poet and the first Scottish-born poet to hold the position of Poet Laureate in the UK.