Kate Simpson

Profile

I am an editor, poet, and critic, writing through extinction. 

I have edited for prominent UK publishers including Aesthetica, Faber, and Magma, and write regularly on literature and climate for The Telegraph and the TLS, amongst other outlets. Titles I have published have been praised for their “close focus on the botanical and the geological”, (Irish Times) and their “deep communion” with nature (Poetry Society). 

My anthology, Out of Time: Poetry from the Climate Emergency (2021, Valley Press), was a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation – lauded as the ‘definitive anthology for this decisive decade’ – and listed as one of the Guardian/Observer’s Books of the Year. As a collaboration with, and celebration of, Friends of the Earth’s 50^th anniversary, the title featured cover artwork and an introductory note from principal research scientist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Science, Ed Hawkins, MBE, and was endorsed by climate scientist Mark Maslin MBE, as a book which “empowers us to change our world,” as well as by Daljit Nagra, Chair of the Society of Literature, who described it as a “transformative read”.

I have programmed for international festivals including the BAFTA-Qualifying Aesthetica Short Film Festival, the Aesthetica Future Now Symposium, Durham Book Festival and Verve Poetry Festival. In 2024, I was the inaugural producer of Summit: a Poetry School Festival, in collaboration with the National Poetry Centre, the Laurel Prize, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Poetry Book Society, National Landscapes Association, and the University of Leeds. I have been on the jury for the Sony World Photography Awards – on the theme of Building a Better Future (2020) and have been part of the selection team for competitions including Audible’s The Listening Pitch, a major documentary film grant.

In 2022 I was awarded a Leverhulme Trust Scholarship, and a place on the UK’s first Extinction Studies Doctoral Training Programme. I subsequently became a member of the Poetry Centre at the University of Leeds, where I am working on a debut collection exploring deep time literacy. I have performed, recently, at the Royal Geographical Society, Kew Gardens, and the Seamus Heaney HomePlace. 

In summer 2024, I was commissioned to write and perform a poetic elegy, alongside Andri Snær Magnason, for the 5^th Anniversary of the Memorial for Okjökull glacier, co-sponsored by UNESCO, in the lead-up to the United Nation’s declaration of 2025 as the “Official Year of Glaciers’ Preservation”. I have been described, by the Times Literary Supplement as “determinedly radical and iconoclastic… with a tautness and focus not typical of the genre”, and by the Guardian, as part of a poetry community “rising to meet the challenge” of global heating.

kateelspethsimpson.com 

Research interests

I am part of a Doctoral Training Programme in Extinction Studies. I sit between the School of English and the School of Earth and Environment, where I am working on a debut collection exploring deep time poetics, addressing what geologist Marcia Bjornerud defines as our species-specific “chronophobia” – a climactic form of “time denial”.

Qualifications

• MA Creative Writing (Distinction), Newcastle University
• BA (Hons) English with Creative Writing (First Class), University of Nottingham

Research groups and institutes

• Environmental Humanities Research Group
• Poetry Centre
• Creative Writing at Leeds
• Centre for Practice Research in the Arts