Kate Simpson

Profile

I am an editor, poet, writer, and critic. I am the former Associate Editor of Aesthetica (2016-2022), and have independently edited for renowned poetry publishers including Faber, Valley Press, and AMBIT, amongst others. I have worked with numerous institutions, publishers, galleries, festivals and organisations, with selected collaborators including Apple, Audible, Bloomsbury, Guardian, Granta, Guggenheim, MIT Press, London Review of Books, Penguin Random House, Poetry Society, Sony, V&A, and Royal Academy. My anthology, Out of Time: Poetry from the Climate Emergency (2021), featured the likes of Pascale Petit, Karen McCarthy Woolf, and Seán Hewitt. It was a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation – lauded as the ‘definitive anthology for this decisive decade’ – and was listed as one of the Guardian/Observer's Books of the Year. My writing has been published in the Times Literary Supplement, the Telegraph, Poetry Review, Poetry London, Poetry School, PN Review, and The London Magazine, amongst others.
@kate_elspeth | My website

Publications

Single editions

• Ambit Issue 249: MAGICK (Contributing Editor), February 2023
• Ambit Issue 248: WAR (Contributing Editor), September 2022
• Butcher’s Dog Issue 17 (Co-Editor alongside Jo Clement, Pippa Little and Ella Duffy), June 2022
• Ambit Issue 246 (Contributing Editor), February 2022
• Aesthetica Magazine (Associate Editor, bi-monthly), Issues 70–108, 2016–2022
• Aesthetica Creative Writing Anthology (Associate Editor, annual), 2016–2022

Poetry collections

• Emma Must, The Ballad of Yellow Wednesday (Editor, Valley Press), December 2022
• Linda France, Startling (Editor, Faber & New Writing North), October 2022
• Out of Time: Poetry from the Climate Emergency (Editor, Valley Press), July 2021

Short fiction

• ‘The Last Demography’, The London Magazine, February/March 2021

Selected reviews and essays

• ‘Writing with Plants’ (on Elizabeth-Jane Burnett’s Twelve Words for Moss and L. Kiew’s More than Weeds), The London Magazine, June/July 2023
• ‘Snails’ race to extinction’ (on Thom Van Dooren’s A World in a Shell: Snail Stories for a Time of Extinctions), Times Literary Supplement, May 2023
• ‘Is this how the apocalypse will look?’, (on Justin Cronin’s The Ferryman, Natasha Calder’s Whether Violent or Natural and The Telegraph, April 2023
• ‘Mutually Inclusive: on the terror and splendour of human language’ (on Stephen Watts’ Collected Poems, Jorie Graham’s [To] The Last [Be] Human, and Brenda Shaughnessy’s Liquid Flesh), Poetry Review, Vol. 113 No. 3, Spring 2023
• ‘The Wild Within: Histories of a Landmark Zoo’ (review), Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism
• ‘Beasts and super-beasts: a quietly radical compendium of "weirdo" animals’ (on Joanna Bagniewska’s The Modern Bestiary), Times Literary Supplement, January 2023
• ‘Sustained sniffing: an olfactory exploration of trees’ (on David George Haskell’s Thirteen Ways to Smell a Tree), Times Literary Supplement, January 2023
• ‘Friend, not commodity: changing our approach to water’ (on Erica Gies’ Water Always Wins), Times Literary Supplement, September 2022
• ‘Wasps for wasps’ sake’ (on Seirian Sumner’s Endless Forms: The Secret World of Wasps), Times Literary Supplement, June 2022
• ‘To Be Human: on mythology, psychogeography and acts of untethering’ (on Fiona Benson’s Ephemeron, Emily Berry’s Unexhausted Time and Polly Atkin’s Much with Body), Poetry London, Issue 102, June 2022
• ‘A series of little deaths: on Penelope Lively’s Metamorphosis’, The London Magazine, February/March 2022
• ‘History is gunk: jellies, gloops, glues and other substances essential to life on Earth’ (on Susanne Wedlich’s Slime), Times Literary Supplement, February 2022
• ‘Positive/Negative Space: on lamentations, elegies and odes’ (on Gail Mcconnell’s The Sun is Open, Nidhi Zak Aria Eipe’s Auguries of a Minor God and Threa Almontaser’s The Wild Fox of Yemen), Poetry Review, Vol. 111, No. 4, Winter 2021
• ‘Salt, Sugar, Sweat: The Aesthetics of Danger’ (on Amber Medland’s Wild Pets and Lucy Caldwell’s Intimacies),The London Magazine, August / September 2021
• ‘Subversion and Satire: on humour, melancholia and intertextuality’ (on Luke Kennard’s Notes on the Sonnets and Julian Stannard’s Heat Wave), Poetry Review, Vol. 111, No. 2
• ‘State of Flux: on plurality, authenticity and reinvention in the age of hyper-connectivity’ (on Annie Freud’s Hiddensee, Phoebe Stuckes’ Platinum Blonde, and Claudine Toutoungi’s Two Tongues), Poetry London, Issue 100, Autumn 2021
• ‘Review: Beethoven Variations by Ruth Padel’, Poetry School, May 2021
• ‘Review: Magnetic Field by Simon Armitage’, Poetry School, March 2021
• ‘Conditions of Survival: the intimacy and insistency of two debut collections' (on Daisy Lafarge’s Life Without Air and Ella Frears’ Shine, Darling’), Poetry Review, Vol. 110, No.4, Winter 2020
• ‘The Entanglements of Consumerism’ (on Inua Ellams’ The Actual, Tim Cresswell’s Plastiglomerate and Abi Palmer’s Sanatorium), The London Magazine, October / November 2020
• ‘Chaos for what it is’ (on Andrés Barba’s Luminous Republic and Such Small Hands), The London Magazine, June 2020

Awards and commendations

• The Guardian, Best Poetry Books of 2021, December 2021 (for Out of Time)
• Poetry Book Society Special Commendation, Autumn 2021 (for Out of Time)

Endorsements and reviews for Out of Time

‘Kate Simpson has not only collected some of the most exciting voices in ecopoetry and brought them together in this extraordinary anthology, but she has written an essay which articulates the glorious activism burning through every line in these poems. Here you will find transcendent articulations of limitless miracles of nature and conversely damning records of humanity's greatest shame; the systematic and rapid destruction of our very life support system – planet earth. From the seas to the skies, from gutters to treetops these poems constitute a hugely important record of the most critical challenge faced by us all – that of climate crisis.’ – Sally Carruthers, Executive Director, Poetry School

‘There are so many exciting poems in this anthology that are inspiring and built on the good poetics of fightback: of the upbeat mood to make more of life, to be kind, to be outward-looking, and to be worthy of this home on our planet. A transformative read.’ – Daljit Nagra, Chair of the Royal Society of Literature

‘Poetry from the Climate Emergency challenges, inspires, and empowers us to change our world.’ – Professor Mark Maslin, Professor of Earth System Science at University College London, and author of ‘How to Save Our Planet: The Facts’ (Penguin 2021)    

‘The power of these poems is in their collective, eclectic response.’ – Andrew McMillan, Poetry Book Society Selector, Autumn 2021

‘The best eco-themed anthology to emerge this year.’ – Rishi Dastidar, Guardian, December 2021

‘The ardency and urgency of this selection set it apart from much of what is published about the living world.’ – Sara Hudston, Times Literary Supplement, February 2022

Research interests

I am currently researching the field of Extinction Studies, funded by the Leverhulme Trust. My practice-led project sits between the School of English and the School of Earth and Environment, and focuses on producing a new creative methodology of a ‘polytemporal poetic’ that addresses what geologist Marcia Bjornerud defines as our species-specific ‘chronophobia’ – a form of ‘time denial’.

My research considers the role that poetry can play in changing how deep time is interpreted, experienced, and understood, utilising the economy and spatial semantic reasoning of the page. I am implicitly interested in bridging the respective roles of the poet and the palaeontologist, examining both disciplines and their expansive – yet limited – roles in excavating time to build a larger, semiotic framework. I am also interested in the long poem – texts that offer a sustained attention to more-than-human subjects – and the cognitive space this employs.

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