HELEN MOORE: ecopoet / socially engaged artist / writer
About
Image credit: @marksimmonsphoto
Dr Helen Moore has pioneered a career as an ecopoet since becoming 'Bard of Bath', in the annual competition in 2003, and draws on the Bardic tradition in her ecopoetry. She holds a PhD based on her internationally acclaimed writing, teaches and works to commission.
Helen’s ecopoetry, essays and short stories have been widely published in print and online journals. Over the past 10 years, her ecopoems have appeared in the following selection of anthologies: The Weight of Quiet Things, Essays, Stories and Poems on Scotland's Living Landscapes (Arkbound Publishing, 2026), Apocalyptic Landscapes (Valley Press, 2024), Welcome to Britain (Civic Leicester, 2023), 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).
Interview
An interview with Helen Moore and Craig Santos Perez by Kathryn Alderman was published in ‘Ink, Sweat, Tears’ for National Poetry Day, 2022.
Inter / national appearances
Through her work as an academic and as an ecopoet, Helen has appeared on national and international platforms, including:
April 2026: Ecopoetry reading with Mona Arshi and Mario Petrucci at the Planetary Arts event, Royal Over-Seas League, London
September 2025: Speaker at the Clades |Critical Language Awareness, Democratic Engagement and Sustainability conference, Univerzita Komenského v Bratislave, Slovakia
May 2025: Panellist on 'Writers and Ethics' at the annual conference of the European Association of Creative Writing Programmes, Paris, France
March 2025: In-person ecopoetry reading with Massimo D'Arcangelo at Climate Fiction Days Festival, Pistoia, Italy
July 2024: Ecopoetry reading (online) at Universitas Ahmad Dahlan, Indonesia
April 2024: In-person reading at Cheltenham Poetry Festival with Don Paterson and David Punter
Aug 2023: Launch of ECOPOETIKON at the biennial Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment UK and Ireland (ASLE-UKI) conference, Liverpool University
Sept 2021: Keynote lecture at PoesiaEuropa, Italy, on ‘Poetry/landscape: Ecopoetry as restorative act’ and readings of my ecopoetry at the festival
February 2019: seminar and poetry reading with students at Delhi University Arts Faculty, India
Literary awards
In 2020 Helen's work was nominated in 'best poem' category for the Forward Prize, was a winner in the US Center for Interfaith Relations' Sacred Essays competition, and she received substantial grants from Arts Council England, Society of Authors and the Royal Literary Fund. In May 2018, she presented the annual Hay Festival INSPIRE lecture, having won a competition theme around literature and sustainability with her essay ‘Is love the answer? Personal and planetary wellbeing through the lens of poetry’.
Other awards include $1,000AUD for best poem in issue (Meniscus, 2017) and places in Poetry Book Fair Competition 2017, Second Light National Women’s poetry competition 2013, and The Liberated Words International Poetry Film Festival 2013.
Poetry films / books / reviews / events
Helen has also made award-winning poetry films, which are available to view here.
For details about Helen's books, please visit here.
For reviews of Helen's work, go here.
And for latest news about book launch events, readings etc, go here.
Wild Writing workshops / retreats
Helen has a background as a Forest School leader and led environmental education/outdoor wellbeing projects for over a decade. She draws on this, her teaching background and her own co-creative practice to lead wild writing workshops, retreats and mentoring.
For more details about workshops, please visit her Workshops page.
For Helen's online mentoring programme, Wild Ways to Writing, go here.
Helen is co-facilitating a Wild Writing retreat with the inspiring environmental 'Solutionist' Nicola Peel in September 2026. For more details, please visit here.
Socially / ecologically engaged arts projects / commissions
Helen has collaborated on a range of socially and ecologically oriented projects, which are detailed more fully here.
Her most recent project was a commission from Cape Farewell to work on RiverRun (2020-21), exploring river pollution in Dorset. This culminated with an exhibition of her long landscape ecopoem, ‘Dorset Waterbodies, a Common / weal’ at Durlston Country Park and Lighthouse, Poole, in 2021, and as part of Cape Farewell’s ‘Art & Climate Change Exhibition’ at the Atkinson Gallery, 2023.
Background / ethos / positionality
Environmental education / outdoor wellbeing
Having co-founded Shared Earth Learning Co-op in 2010 – a co-operative enterprise running Forest School and outdoor wellbeing groups in Somerset – Helen co-directed the company until August 2020, facilitating groups that have supported hundreds of children, young people and adults to deepen their Nature connection, develop a range of practical skills, and improve their wellbeing.
While based in NE Scotland between 2016 – 2018, Helen led a range of outdoor wellbeing programmes with Earth for Life CIC across Grampian Region. These included Forestry Commission's 'Branching Out', and programmes she co-designed in-house, such as 'Wildlife & Wellbeing', which offered participants the opportunity to engage in 'Citizen Science' by recording and reporting wildlife sightings to local conservation agencies.