Darwin's Microscope

by Kelley Swain

Darwin’s Microscope, Swain’s debut volume of poetry, was first published in 2009 by Flambard Press. It is now in a tenth-anniversary volume from Valley Press, to celebrate the song cycle Endless Forms Most Beautiful, composed by Cheryl Frances-Hoad, of which a selection of the poems comprises a significant part. In the decade since her first publication, Swain has continued to inhabit the liminal space between science and poetry, working as a celebrated poet and art critic specialising in both ecological and medical topics, including a year as one of the first three poets-in-residence at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

With a section of new poems, Moult, exclusive cover art by artist Katherine Child, and an introduction by Luz Mar González-Arias, this edition gives readers the opportunity to revisit Swain’s debut collection in the context of international debates on the current geological era, the Anthropocene, characterised by overwhelming evidence on climate change. With demonstrations of ecological grief taking place worldwide, there is now an urgency to search for reciprocal ways of relating to our environment. Darwin’s Microscope contributes to the search from the vantage point of experiencing two worlds at the same time: in other words, by inhabiting the space where magic happens.

106 pages, Paperback

Published October 2, 2019

About the author

Kelley Swain lives in rural Oxfordshire. She is a freelance writer and critic, and contributes regularly to The Lancet medical journals' arts and culture pages.

In 2016, she was one of three poets-in-residence at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, and was artist-in-residence at Duke University for November 2016.

The Naked Muse, Kelley's memoir of working as an artists' model, was published in 2016.

Kelley was Guest Lecturer in Humanities in Global Health for three years, at Imperial College London.

She is the author of the poetry collections Atlantic (Cinnamon Press, 2014), Opera di Cera (Valley Press, 2014), Darwin's Microscope (Flambard Press, 2009). Her debut novel, Double the Stars, was by Cinnamon Press in September 2014.

From 2009 - 2012, while poet-in-residence at the Whipple Museum of the History of Science in the Department of the History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, Kelley edited two collections of art and poetry: Pocket Horizon (Valley Press, 2013), and The Rules of Form: Sonnets and Slide Rules (Whipple Museum, 2012).

She is a member of the Greenwich-based Nevada Street Poets, which has been running since 2008.