The Uncollected Animals

Leading poet and activist John Kinsella brings together a

major international collection of contemporary and historical poetry that speaks

to the rights and welfare of animals.

The Uncollected Animals is a unique anthology of poetry

based around all non-human animal life, with the welfare and rights of animals

at the forefront. The anthology includes over forty commissioned poems, and

other poems provided by poets specifically for the anthology. These are set

against an historical context of animal-referencing poems that range in time

from ancient Greece to the 21st century. Kinsella's introduction offers

insights into the eternal relationship of poetry to animals, and the creative

arrangement of the poems yields startling contrasts and alliances that will

draw readers into a powerful relationship with the work.

The book includes 165 poems representing some sixteen

countries and many different cultures. Together, this collective utterance

respects and conserves a great variety of perspectives. Writing in a full range

of styles, the diverse voices found inside include poets from Aristophanes,

Blake, Coleridge, Du Fu, Melville, and Wordsworth to Anne Carson, CA Conrad,

Kimiko Hahn, Paul Laurence Dunbar, D.H. Lawrence, Sylvia Plath, Maya Angelou, Rita

Dove, and Marianne Moore, to important young voices, to performer/lyricists

such as Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore. At all times, animals, their rights, and

their welfare are at the fore, be they invertebrates, bird, mammal, reptile,

amphibian, or fish.

In a time of human-induced mass extinctions and rapid

human-induced climate change, this subject could not be more vital and

necessary for all of us to consider, embrace, and act on with empathy.