Seeds in the Dirt: A Celebration of Eco-Writing

Join us in the Recital Room at ARU in Cambridge for readings from three new titles by four great eco-writers.

Sarah Royston will be reading from her new short story collection, Fernseed, a speculative dive into history and the English landscape. Sarah’s writing draws inspiration from queer ecologies, plant-lore and the landscapes of southern England. Her work has been published in Dark Mountain, The Rumpus and Crow & Cross Keys, among others.

Alice Willits is a writer, editor and plantswoman from the Fens, and namechecks Nature as her forever co-author. She founded and runs The 57 Poetry Collective in Cambridge and is the creator and commissioning editor of DIRT plantable poetry with Dialect Writers. Alice will be reading from a new collection forthcoming in 2025.

Clare Pollard and Freya Sacksen's Loops is a tiny, unfoldable pamphlet poem recounting an eerie exchange between a swallow and a drone. Clare and Freya will read the entirety of Loops, as well as some of their other new work.

Clare has published five collections of poetry with Bloodaxe, with her sixth – Lives of the Female Poets – forthcoming in 2025. She has also written a non-fiction title, Fierce Bad Rabbits: The Tales Behind Children's Picture Books (Fig Tree), her first children’s novel, The Untameables (The Emma Press), and two adult novels, Delphi and The Modern Fairies (Fig Tree).

Freya is a UK-based poet from Aotearoa, New Zealand. Their work has been published in digital journals EnbyLife and SWAMP, as well as the ARU anthology The Word Is…SMUT. Their poetry embraces storytelling, ecopoetics, liminality and queer identity.