Exploring biodiversity creatively with young people: a poetry-in-nature approach

The Poetry Society is the UK’s leading poetry organisation. Education is key to our mission, and for several years now, we have put environmental programming at the heart of our work with young people, aiming to raise awareness about climate change and to encourage young people to use their creativity to advocate for the natural world. 

How does poetry help young people to engage with nature? 

Poetry is a brilliant tool to introduce young people to new perspectives and enable them to share their own. Topics that can seem abstract or inaccessible are seen in a novel light when introduced through poetry. ‘Tell it slant’ Emily Dickinson famously said, and this is precisely how poetry can pique curiosity: by approaching a theme at an oblique angle.  

One of the contexts in which we invite young people to explore eco-poetry is our community for young poets, Young Poets Network. This is an online space where we offer year-round writing challenges, workshops and performance opportunities, curated to introduce young poets to new topics and poetic techniques. Every year, we programme at least one eco-poetry challenge: in the past, for example, we have worked with People Need Nature to run challenges on green social prescribing and the sounds of nature, with green engineering firm AESSEAL on a challenge about imagining a greener future, and with Portland Japanese Garden on a challenge about peace and nature.  

Above: Young Poets Network run by the Poetry Society filled to the brim with talent from a new generation of poets.

These challenges invite young poets to think about nature in ways they might not previously have considered. We show them example poems for inspiration, introducing them to the topic through a human voice and sparking their interest through empathy. Some of the poems written by young people in response are striking. Here is an extract from the winning poem in a recent challenge: 

I. Then

In the end, we still had children, just in places

we’d one day be buried / In our dreams, we saw dryads

build a forest that was thriving / In our food were the worms

we returned to the soil / In the rivers were the builders

we befriended for our future / In the morning, we cut wood

til our shoulders kept on shaking / In the day, we gave up

and left it to the builders / In the night, we went gazing

at the headlights in the cosmos / In the dark, we told

stories, imagined the world before our coping.

(Extract from ‘On Confronting the Natural Course of Things’ by Zain Rishi, First-Prize winner in the ‘Earthlings, Building’ challenge on Young Poets Network). 

Left: Rachael Land – Education & Engagement Officer and (Right) Holly Moser – Project Officer from the South West Peatland Partnership explore Dartmoor’s peatland with primary school children. Banner Image: Dr Martin Gillard, Historic Environment Officer, South West Peatland Partnership.

Bog Talk 

Our latest Young Poets Network challenge invites young poets to write about bogs! It’s part of the ‘Bog Talk’ project, funded by Natural England and run with RENEW and the South West Peatland Partnership (SWPP). As part of our commitment to creating opportunities for peer-led work where young people can learn from one another, we commissioned two young poets who had experience of bogs to create the challenge; both have come up through our talent development programmes, and one of them took part in the RENEW Bog Day in Exeter. The two young poets designed a brilliant series of writing prompts, and one of them ran an online workshop for other young poets, drawing on audio recordings and photographs of bogs she has been working on. 

Beyond Young Poets Network, Bog Talk has seen us work with primary schools on exploring peatland through poetry. Poets Poppy and Jonah visited three schools in Plymouth, where they delivered poetry workshops about bogs. Alongside this, we planned for schools to visit Dartmoor and explore a bog in the wild. 

One thing we quickly learned, however, is that adverse weather can always throw a spanner in the works! When one trip to the moor was cancelled, the SWPP team improvised by creating a ‘bog in a box’, which is exactly what it sounds like – a piece of peatland brought into the school in a see-through crate, which pupils could touch, sniff and observe (the bog was returned to its patch of moor afterwards!).  

A second trip was similarly scuppered by a storm but, this time, we managed to reschedule and finally got the children out to the moor. They had a brilliant time splashing around, pond dipping, writing more poems and learning about bronze-age archaeology. 

Above: (Left) Primary School children inspecting a viewing dish of critters from the peatland. (Right) Teacher Lucie Garland helps a student remove a wellington boot filled with bog water.

What did we learn? 

Children have a natural interest in stories, so they responded really positively when poetry was used to introduce them to topics they would normally explore in Science or Geography lessons. Thus, they learned that sundews are carnivorous plants but, rather than learning this fact by rote, they instead were able to imagine a narrative trajectory that followed the plight of an unsuspecting fly trapped by the plant. Some of them rooted for the fly; others relished in its demise! Similarly, they learned about threats to peatland by personifying sphagnum moss, allowing them to feel an emotional connection with a landscape at risk. 

What was beautiful was how their perspectives changed between the workshops in class and the trip to the moor. The classroom workshops gave them a solid understanding of how the habitat and ecosystem are formed, but it wasn’t until they got out there that the tone of their poems became one of calm and even joy. This example is by eleven-year-old Lucy: 

Rocks as bright as daisies are as far as the eye can see

A slight breeze fills the air as this is written; feel it and embrace it

The boggy moor fills me with joy and contentment

As you listen, feel the grass flowing and graceful, and the moss soft and green.

Above: “Rocks as bright as daisies are as far as the eye can see…” Lucy (Age 11) 

Key Takeaway 

In England, we have a curriculum that is particularly siloed – once young people reach secondary school, subjects are taught separately, often with little opportunity for dialogue between one set of skills and topics and another. Throughout all The Poetry Society’s work bringing together creative writing and environmental themes, we have seen the transformative effect of cross-disciplinary work. Poetry brings topics alive, allowing young people to feel invested in a landscape and empowering them to use their voices to speak up for nature.  

There are benefits for poetry, too: the environmental theme often makes the art form relatable to students who might have been put off by their experiences of a narrow canon. When they see the world around them represented in a poem, their understanding of what poetry is and what it can do becomes more expansive. Looking ahead, I hope there is room for more dialogue across disciplines, creating space for the physical world to meet the imagination. In that spirit, we’ve made available two new learning resources, supported by RENEW and Natural England, which educators can use to foster that dialogue: created by the poets who worked on the project, ‘Bogs Talking’ and ‘Becoming a Bog’ are worksheets and accompanying slides designed to introduce primary-school children to the topic and get them writing. 

Natasha Ryan, Education Manager, The Poetry Society 

We would like to thank all the team from the South West Peatland Partnership, Dartmoor Bog-Talk poets in residence Poppy-Jayne Jones & Jonah Corren & all the children and staff from Devon, Primary Schools.