Dark Verse

Billboard 8 - Berlin by Robert Montgomery (Issue 10: Uncivilised Poetics)
There’s been poetry at the heart of Dark Mountain from its beginnings. The name itself is taken from a line of Robinson Jeffers.
Many members of the editorial team who have been responsible for the Dark Mountain books are also poets, including Em Strang, Sophie McKeand and Adrienne Odasso.
In this section, you can get a taste of the uncivilised poetics for which we have sought to create a home.

Two Poems from Issue 11
Anne Haven McDonnell and Eleanor Hooker
28th April, 2017
Predators Anne Haven McDonnell A scream is made to cut through the mind’s fog, all...

Considering Leaves: After John Trudell
Ben Weaver
15th February, 2017
You could rake leaves while the glaciers melt and horses stand somewhere in a field...

Poems of Genesis and Degeneration
John David Ebert
23rd November, 2016
Civilisation begins in wonder and awe: the visions of the planets crawling across the ebony...

The Details
Jay Ruzesky
8th November, 2016
JR: You have said, ‘Philosophy is thinking in love with clarity.’ Can you tell me...

No More Words for Snow
Nancy Campbell
29th October, 2016
And if the sun had not erased the tracks upon the ice, they would tell...

The Scythe and the Slaughterer
Emma Must and Vahni Capildeo
24th October, 2016
You can no more lend a man your scythe than you can lend him your...

The Persistence of Poetry and the Destruction of the World
Robert Bringhurst
21st October, 2016
But an inhabited world, with its own philosophical, artistic, scientific, and literary traditions, is not...


The Height and the Drop
The Editors
25th June, 2016
Since the Dark Mountain Project was launched in October 2009, the distance between the height and...

We Are All In This Together
Kim Goldberg and Jane Lovell
22nd April, 2016
Kim Goldberg has been contributing magical, otherworldly writing to Dark Mountain for some time now,...