World Earth Day and Ralph Hodgson
World Earth Day is an annual movement which was recently celebrated on 22 April 2021. The aim of World Earth Day, which started just over fifty years ago in 1970, is to create a global movement that causes transformative change for both people and the planet.
As we become more conscious as to the acts that we need to perform in order to help save the planet – think back to the moment when David Attenborough captured footage of the turtle with the plastic in its mouth – there has also been a rise in environmental fiction in recent years that increases awareness about the environment, and human impact on it. Perhaps one of the most famous examples of this fiction type is Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. Published in 1961, and celebrating its sixtieth anniversary this year, the book documents the impact of the then new chemicals aimed at disease and pest control. At the time of publication there was an outcry from scientists and large chemical companies, who tried to dismiss Carson’s claims.
However, environmental fiction dates back much further than this. In the early twentieth century, poet Ralph Hodgson wrote about ecology, speaking out against the fur trade, and humanity’s destruction of the natural world. Born in Darlington, County Durham to a father who was a coal miner, Hodgson’s first poetry collection The Blackbird and Other Lines made its first appearance in 1907. He also won the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 1954. Hodgson’s private press, At the Sign of the Flying Fame, published several of his poems in 1931, including the well-known ‘The Bull’ and ‘The Bells of Heaven.’
Turning now to the twenty-first century, environmental fiction continues to pick up the pace. Richard Power’s The Overstory (2018) follows the lives of nine American people and five trees whose collective experiences help to tackle forest destruction. Another recent example is Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood (2009), which explores how technology and science has been the cause of the plagued world in which the novel is set.
Ecological fiction is set to continue and gain popularity as awareness about environmental issues steadily begin to increase. If you have read or have any suggestions for environmental fiction reads, do drop us a comment. Additionally, we also have other books about Ralph Hodgson available for purchase on the Greenwich Exchange website: John Harding has written several books about the visionary poet, including The Last Blackbird and Other Poems, and also Dreaming of Babylon: The Life and Times of Ralph Hodgson.