Sky Burials

by Ben Smith

The poems in Ben Smith's first chapbook map shifting environments, strange ecological events and dubious auguries. They trace rivers, coastlines and other borders, where saints set sail in boats of stone, wolves stalk the suburbs of Chernobyl and scientists leap from cliffs dressed in coats of feathers. Told through the voices of birds, unreliable seers and broken bones found in rivers and museums, these dark, playful poems explore prophecy and ritual, science and uncertainty in the era of climate change.

Genres: Poetry

34 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Ben Smith is based in North Cornwall, where he lives with his partner, the author Lucy Wood (4th Estate) and is a creative writing lecturer at Plymouth University. His first poetry pamphlet, Sky Burials, was published by Worple Press and his poetry and criticism have appeared in numerous outlets. As an academic, he specialises in environmental literature focusing particularly on oceans, waste and the ‘Anthropocene’, relating to human impact on geology. He is one of the founding editors of The Clearing, a magazine about landscape and place.

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

I discovered Ben Smith through Nature Matters 2018, the annual New Networks for Nature conference. He was part of a panel discussion on the role that poetry might play in environmental activism, and read several of his recent poems inspired by the Earth System Model, which provides the data for the International Panel on Climate Change. Climate modeling might seem an odd subject for poetry, but it provides excellent metaphors for failure and hope in “Spinning Up,” “Data Sets” and “Alternate Histories.”

I was impressed enough to buy a copy of this, Smith’s debut chapbook published by small Kent-based indie Worple Press, from the bookstall. Although it doesn’t include any of the poems I’d heard at the event, it shares the environmentalist focus. Many of the poems are about birds. There’s a sense of history (in “Archaeopteryx,” about evolution from dinosaurs) but also of the future. The title poem, which appears last, is about what will become of the body after death: being reincorporated into nature. “The First Bear” reads like a prophecy of species loss and irrevocable climate change. “Lesson XVII: Defining Terms,” from “Lessons in Augury,” is particularly apt in this age of fake news. “Nature: that used to mean something didn’t it? That was where we saw things. Where we heard things.”

My favorites were “Augury with Rubber Ducks,” which is about the same incident that inspired Moby-Duck, one of my favorite random books, and includes a “Teach us” refrain reminiscent of T.S. Eliot; “The Weather Station,” featuring an Icarus-like sacrificial figure; and “Magpie Words.” I was also particularly haunted by the last lines of “The Wolves of Chernobyl”: “You ask about their eyes. There is nothing I can say. / They have gazed into the light at the end of the world, / then turned and walked away.”

I’m currently reading Smith’s recent debut novel, Doggerland, and have been interested to see how some of the themes and language of his poetry entered into his fiction. I’ll be sure to quote from it in my review of the novel.

[Jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely love this book as it challenges how I think about things. I would say there is an overall theme of the damage we are doing the environmental and the impact on nature, so a slightly dark undertone to it all, but not all the poems are dark and not all focus on this theme. Both the detail and the big picture issues really made me think - I always love a book that challenges my perceptions or educates me - and this did!