Helen Moore ecopoetry

Helen Moore is an award-winning British ecopoet, essayist, short fiction writer, community artist and Nature educator based in North Dorset, SW England.

She enjoys performing and discussing her work, and is passionate about inspiring others to connect with their authentic creativity and wilder selves.

For information about Helen's workshops, click here.

For 1:1 mentoring here.

And Helen's latest news can be found here.

ECOPOETRY BOOKS / PUBLISHED WRITINGS

Her debut ecopoetry collection, Hedge Fund, And Other Living Margins (Shearsman Books, 2012), was described as being 'in the great tradition of visionary politics in British poetry'.

Her second, ECOZOA (Permanent Publications, 2015), has been acclaimed by the Australian poet, John Kinsella, as 'a milestone in the journey of ecopoetics'.

INTATTO. INTACT: Ecopoesia. Ecopoetry, a bilingual Italian-English work, co-authored with Massimo D'Arcangelo (Italy) and Anne Elvey (Australia), was published by La Vita Felice in 2017.

In 2019 Helen toured the UK with her third collection, The Mother Country (Awen Publications), which explores British colonial history and themes of dispossession.

Helen's poems, essays and short stories have appeared in a range of national and international journals and anthologies, including:

Messages from the Embers: Australian Bushfire Poetry Anthology (Black Quill Press, 2020)

Hacking the Anthropocene: Feminist, Queer, Anticolonial Propositions (Open Humanities Press, 2020)

The Valley Press Anthology of Prose Poetry (2019)

Diamond Cutters: Visionary Poets in America, Britain and Oceania (Tayen Lane, 2016)

She is regularly invited to read her work at literary / environmental events; in 2018 Helen gave the annual INSPIRE lecture at the Hay Book Festival, and in 2021 she gave a keynote lecture on ecopoetry and landscape at PoesiaEuropa in Italy.

You can read reviews of her work here.

COMMISSIONS / PROJECTS

As a socially and ecologically engaged community artist, Helen has worked on a diverse range of cross-arts projects, and she brings multiple skills and experience to co-create memorable events.

In 2023, Helen began collaborating with the University of Gloucestershire on 'ECOPOETIKON', a digital humanities project showcasing global ecopoetries. The project was launched at the biennial conference of the Association for the Study of Literature with twelve poets from countries including India, Nigeria, the Philippines, Singapore, Estonia, Italy, the Pacific island of Guam and the UK. More ecopoets will be added over the coming months.

Between 2020-21, Helen collaborated with Cape Farewell on the RiverRun project, exploring pollution and climate impacts in Poole Bay and its watershed. In 2021 her poetry installations were featured at Lighthouse gallery in Poole, along with visual artists David Buckland and Anna Frijstein.

Her landscape ecopoem 'Dorset Waterbodies, a Common/weal' is currently exhibited at Somerset's Atkinson Gallery alongside work by Anthony Gormley, Chris Drury, Rachel Whiteread, David Buckland, Michael Pinsky and Ian McEwan, as part of Cape Farewell's 'Art and Climate Change' exhibition (11/9/23-11/10/23).

PRIZES / AWARDS

In 2020 Helen's work was nominated in 'best poem' category for the Forward Prize and was a winner in the Center for Interfaith Relations' Sacred Essays competition.

She was also awarded grants by the Royal Literary Fund and Arts Council England to support her work.

You can read some of her published writings here.

ECOPOETRY WORKSHOPS / SEMINARS

Helen has given ecopoetry and wild writing seminars and workshops at Bristol University, University of Gloucestershire, Goldsmiths University, Arts University Bournemouth, University of Edinburgh and Delhi University. She also presented 'ECOZOA: A poetic revisioning of the Anthropocene' at the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment's 2017 conference (Sheffield-Hallam University). In Spring 2023, she remotely facilitated experiential wild writing seminars for Colby College, Maine, as part of the 'Wild Writing: A Comparative Experiential Approach to Ecopoetics' course.

Helen loves to support others on their creative writing journeys, and offers a unique programme of online and onsite mentoring, Wild Ways to Writing, and bespoke Nature-based workshops. These have included in 2021 a collaboration with Hawkwood College to run onsite and online groups for Wild Ways to Writing participants, and in 2019 a three-day retreat, 'Writing the Land, Writing the Sea' with HighlandLIT in Cromarty, NE Scotland.

POETRY FILMS

Additionally Helen collaborates in making poetry films, including 'Green Spin', made with Howard Vause, which won third prize in the Liberated Words Poetry Film Festival 2013. Her work is screened internationally, and features in The Poetics of Poetry Film.