Only one Earth | by Pat Farrington
“A collection that is at once intimate and planetary, playful and apocalyptic; where crows outwit humans, bears raid bakeries; all the while, oceans rise, forests collapse, and yet a butterfly still lands, trustingly on a thumb, like ‘the prow of an ark.’ At once elegy and love letter, fable and protest, this collection brims with subversive humour and urgent beauty: both lullaby and alarm bell. Farrington's language bends light like a prism: sometimes daring as voicing the feelings of Ice Age animals, sometimes searing as the sound of a vanishing nightingale. Only one Earth is a reckoning — lyrical, witty, unflinching — a plea to prevent people from becoming a plague of locusts upon the Earth.”
— Erwin Arroyo Perez, Founder and EIC of The Poetry Lighthouse
“A wonderful, thought-provoking collection of poems about our planet – from exploration of Nature and the human experience – to reflections on the role of humans in the planetary crisis. I particularly valued the Stewardship and Beyond poems for their challenge and vision.”
— Carolyn Stephens, Professor of Ecology & Global Health, University College London/London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine/University of Primorska
“This is marvellous. I have started reading and am really enjoying. What is so interesting to me is how Pat’s memories and connections with ‘nature’ chime with my own. It makes me understand that we are all carrying these encounters and observations and how important her work is in encouraging us to decipher and centre them.”
— Lucy Siegle, journalist, author, and broadcaster specialising in
environmental issues, climate justice, and sustainable living.
“Farrington’s poetry captures landscapes - ‘spring-sharpened’ silhouettes - and reveals minute details. Her alertness to visual and visceral detail is reminiscent of John Clare. Roots fleshy with sap become art; broken iridescent scales tickle her skin. Recalling a childhood spent in Africa, the poet communicates a child’s sensitivity and awe.
The poet herself remains a small piece of the vast tapestry of the natural world, a quiet voice reporting individual experience. Thus, she reminds the reader of their own smallness - their own impermanence. The smallness of each person becomes the moral thread that runs through this collection.
In later poems, we witness nature destroyed, ‘metal mandibles bite into the earth.’ The poet asks us to consider our own part in either preserving or contributing to the destruction of a world we briefly inhabit. Will we swish past protestors with ‘windows sealed’ or ‘restore the Earth to its former glory’?
The collection is an urgent call to action, darkly realistic at times. Yet, for Farrington, hope lies in the force of nature and the ‘quintillions of animals’ who will outlive us.”
— Hannah Glickstein, counselor and former English teacher. Writer of ‘Skinny Bill’. Her writing has appeared in Huffington Post, The Catholic Herald and Spectator Schools.
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