A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter A

Anthropocene Poetry

Historical And Literary Periods
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A contemporary poetic movement responding to the Anthropocene era, defined by humanity's profound and irreversible impact on Earth's systems and geology. Addresses climate change, extinction, and environmental devastation through experimental and traditional poetic forms.

Detailed Definition
Anthropocene Poetry represents a critical artistic response to ecological crisis and human dominance over planetary systems. Poets document environmental transformation, human complicity, and possible futures. This movement appears in poetry through apocalyptic imagery, scientific language interwoven with lyrical expression, mourning and elegy for lost ecosystems, and calls for ecological consciousness, making it essential to understanding contemporary poetry's engagement with environmental collapse and environmental justice.
Example
Example in poetry:
A poem that uses scientific terminology and geological time scales to contrast human fleetingness with the vast, scarred history of the earth, central to Anthropocene Poetry; A work that focuses on 'non-human' perspectives—plastic debris, extinct species, melting glaciers—as narrators; The fragmentation of form to represent the breakdown of ecosystems and the overwhelming scale of global change; A poem documenting the visible, irreversible human impact on a specific landscape, like a mine or a sprawling landfill.
Additional Notes
Anthropocene Poetry addresses the current geological epoch defined by human impact on Earth’s ecosystems. Emerging in the 21st century, it fuses ecological awareness with philosophical reflection on time, responsibility, and extinction. Poets like Jorie Graham and Alice Oswald highlight the interdependence of humans and nature through innovative forms and eco-critical perspectives.
Also Known As
Anthropocene Literature Climate Change Poetry
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