Description

The poems collected in Fossil Sunshine are the result of Michael McKimm’s year long collaboration with earth scientists, in a project funded by Arts Council England. Drawing on fieldwork with geologists, these poems explore the relationships between geology, the oil industry and climate change, and ask what the evidence held in the geological record can teach us about 21st Century global warming.  Whilst addressing the profound impact human society has had upon our planet, the poems are neither didactic nor doom-laden. From ice ages to landslides, oil spills to geo-engineering, Fossil Sunshine captures the language of geology, as well as the energy and drive of exploration and discovery.

Reviews:

"In the cautious yet constant dialogue between poets and scientists, it is in the field of geology, perhaps, where practitioners of the two disciplines find greatest accord and inspiration.  From 'The Botanic Garden' of Erasmus Darwin and 'Giant’s Causeway' by Drummond of Hawthornden, to  'Eagle Mountain Glacier' from the great nineteenth-century Icelandic poet-scientist Jónas Hallgrímsson and the poems of the Cornish miner-poet John Harris, from Tennyson and Shelley, the lure of geology for poets continues through to modern-day figures such as W H Auden, Ted Hughes, Peter Redgrove, Anne Stevenson, Ann Cluysenaar, Forrest Gander, and the ‘geological sublime’ of J H Prynne, among many others. This tradition continues in the work of Michael McKimm. Here are the mineral dramas of rock and stone, in conversation and conflict with time. The language employed by this poet is powerfully tactile.  These are strong and in every sense grounded poems which are also capable of transformative action and insight into the bedrock of our life experience.  For what lies under the soles of our shoes and the foundations of our houses but bedrock?  Be his subject a calendar year depicting erosions or a landslide or a prose poem about a fossil sea sponge, the reader is engaged and enthralled by the range and consideration that gives each poem its specific and enthralling individuality."

"Fossil Sunshine shows the ground beneath our feet in a whole new light. In these poems, the language of geology is both poetic and political: basalt and limestone, quartz and jasper become urgent works of art. Michael McKimm’s words ring against the rocks."

 Erica Wagner