Name: SMALL Change: From a Workshop on the Anthropocene in Wagga Wagga (ePUB Edition)
SKU: smchg-epub-woo
Availability: InStock

SMALL Change in the Heart of the Anthropocene

What is the Anthropocene—and why interpret it through poetry?

The Anthropocene is the era of human-caused transformation: a time when our actions significantly alter the Earth’s climate and ecosystems. In 2024, poet Frank Prem joined a week-long interdisciplinary workshop in Wagga Wagga with researchers and artists investigating this very issue.

The outcome is SMALL Change—a poetic translation of technical and scientific themes into a language of feeling, story, and lived experience. Frank’s mission was simple: make the concepts accessible. Not just for experts, but for everyone.

A New Voice in Climate Poetry

With poems inspired by contemporary environmental research and daily life, this collection speaks from within the changes we’re all witnessing. From gentle shifts to irreversible disruption, Prem reflects on the earth, the air, and the intimate human response to loss, uncertainty, and survival.

SMALL Change takes its place alongside the many free verse collections by Australian poet and storyteller Frank Prem. (Small Town Kid, Devil In The Wind, The New Asylum – a memoir of psychiatry).

Look Inside

the river falls
like
it has never fallen
before

a drought
that is
the worst of times

the river falls

a rock is exposed
and shows
a letter from
the past

carved letters
from the past

read me and weep
my dears

     if
     you can read me
     then weep

go down upon your knees
my darlings

if you can read me . . .

     only god
     can help you
     now

Poetry that responds to the monumental shifts of our Anthropocene age.

This collection captures the Anthropocene’s emotional terrain — not through dry statistics, but in poems grounded in human response, local experience, and environmental urgency. SMALL Change brings the scientific into the personal, inviting reflection and response.