Book Review: Ecozoa

Helen Moore’s epic collection of poetry uses the structure of the complex mythology of The Four Zoas summoned by the Romantic English visionary, William Blake. Although a reader of Moore’s collection may benefit from reading Blake to enhance understanding, these poems are accessible and evocative for the ‘lay’ reader! Feminist Theology readers may know this poet’s work as ‘glory be to Gaia’ was published in Vol. 22(2) (2014): 213–14.

This book was published in Spring 2015 as signs of new life were emerging in England. Moore’s creativity is as evident as the apple trees blossoming. Moore’s compassionate imagination is as bold as the green hills. On the way to the book launch at the Hunting Raven bookshop in Somerset, we witnessed an ecological marvel of trees coming into bud and felt the deep rhythms of the earth stirring into action. The planet felt precious. The bright dusk journey to the bookshop felt irresistible, compelling and fecund. We attended the poetry reading on an evening where a cerise sun balanced on the horizon, permeating the air with peach light. Thirty scattered pilgrims had travelled to hear this poet’s words. We gathered, seated on the floor in a small space, huddled, meek, brave, awe-struck and intrigued. We listened to a journey through millennia of rock, earth, life, ocean, ancestors and space and heard her quest, reaching out into a future, which the poet summons us to co-create. She calls us to midwife the tender crying earth to a renewal.

The book comprises 39 poems across the four imaginative prophetic voices in Blake’s work. The poems vary greatly in length, scope and context from the deeply intimate to the cosmic. Moore urges all of us, through her poems, to see the all in all and the particular in the universal. Blake’s The Four Zoas opens with a passage from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians ¹ proclaiming that our struggle for the world is not with our own forms, but against ‘rulers, authorities and the cosmic powers of darkness’. Moore tackles these rulers and authorities head on in poems such as ‘Vision, with Product Placement’, ‘Earth Justice’ and ‘Kali Exorcism’. Moore exposes and confronts powers of darkness and chaos – multinational companies, those wreaking environmental tragedy, war-mongers, oppressors… and gives the reader of her poems knowledge, power and fuel for action against these forces, to choose to live differently. She articulates what the environmental activist Joanna Macy calls the ‘postmodern ground for right action’. Macy implores us ‘to act with courage and resilience’ (Macy, 1995: 259) and Moore’s poetry offers us a firm bedrock of radical resources from which to take this brave action. On reading her work, we can become part of a new community which lives with well-being for all at its heart; the solidarity of the shared meal in Jesus feeding the 5,000 which the Indian feminist theologian, Dietrich, recounts can be a community that ‘sustains our vision and protects life itself’ (Dietrich, 1996: 98).

In more intimate poems such as ‘Deep Time, Deep Tissue’, ‘Our Daily Bread’, ‘Healing Song’ and ‘The History of the British Empire in a Single Object’, Moore embeds her own experiences as a woman with the planet and the cosmos; this enriches our view of ourselves and how we are all in direct relationship with the whole earth. Moore implores us to pay more than lip-service to environmentalism; she calls for action towards ‘deep ecology’.

Moore draws on the rich ecofeminist traditions of Rosemary Radford Ruether, Thomas Berry, Joanna Macy and Ivone Gebara. Traditional patriarchal theology has seen nature as subservient to ‘man’ and inanimate (Christ, 2002: 89), but Moore’s work sees the soul, depth and power of all that lives.

Moore’s poems speak to me on a personal, spiritual, geopolitical, global and cosmic level. I feel less complacent and more deeply connected since reading her work. I feel empowered, comforted and provoked to live well and live differently. In a rich mix of candour, anger, beauty, passion and wit, Moore urges us to make a response to the destruction facing the planet. On a personal level, the poem ‘Sweet Pain’ expresses such grief, vision and hope that it has given me the strength to face the next phase in my life. I have taken a sabbatical from church ministry and have begun to pray and dance differently. I am yielding more to the earth’s beauty, while questing to protect it.

One of the listeners, after the poetry reading, said, ‘Wow! How can we follow that!’, but follow it we must. Moore asks us to be disciples in an urgent and necessary calling to care for earth deeply. Her poems are a hue and cry for radical action. On reading her poems, I sense the planet feels even more valuable and in need of deep care. Moore is a prophet and a poet with a key role in our society to urge change and promote right action. In the final lines of ‘glory be to Gaia’, addressed to Gaia, Moore writes:

please light the spark of peace in us that we may serve this precious life.

For earth’s sake.