Anecdotes of the Anthropocene: An anthology

These Anecdotes of the Anthropocene are curated into an anthology. Top and tailed, these twelve pieces of earthy writing reframes a long history of environmental consciousness. The creative artefact challenges readers to consider environmental activism as nothing new – and that a need for educative sign erecting endures. An anthology is a useful way to bring a suite of ‘short’ poems and prose pieces together to encapsulate a cohesive whole – a forest of individual trees. Each vignette is crafted to the norms of a literary sub-genre, but so collected, create a coherent environmental narrative. The goal of the anthology is to proffer an environmental concern via strategic storytelling. Here, the aim of strategic storytelling is to contribute to changing public ecological opinion. Thus the output seeks to motivate an illusionary and unmeasured outcome. The introduction explains the Anthropocene and sets the scene. The twelve following creative non-fiction pieces are then shuffled as: narrative journalism; Op-Ed; ecocriticism; narrative poems (a sonnet, an amphimacer and an ode); speculative non-fiction; concrete-prose; rhetoric and a memoir. The images that begin each vignette signals the theme of the piece visually. Finally, an end-piece wraps up the collection. The anthology is a work of Literary Geography. The word geography originates from the Greek geographia; further comprised of the Latin for Earth (gēo-) and writing (-graphia) – thus writing the world. An accompanying exegesis extends the literary component of the dissertation with a critical analysis of the creative artefact.