The Company of Owls (Elliott and Thompson, 2024) (Milkweed, 2026)

‘[Polly Atkin] is a chimerical guide to owlishness’

Abi Andrews, for Caught by The River

• longlisted for the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing 2025

Some of Us Just Fall: on nature and not getting better (Sceptre, 2023)(Unnamed, 2024)

• Lakeland Book of the Year 2024
• longlisted for the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing 2024

‘Some of Us Just Fall is a remarkable book that deepens our understanding of what it can mean to be human. Polly Atkin beautifully disrupts form in a way that somehow manages to both illustrate and embody the experience of illness and disability. Arrestingly stark in places and gloriously transcendent in others, Some of Us Just Fall is a book that I will urge everyone to read. Few people can capture the experience of inhabiting a body and a place so well, Polly Atkin’s descriptions of lake swimming are sublime. Some of Us Just Fall is an essential addition to writing on nature. It offers a much-needed counterpoint to ill-thinking notions of nature cure and, by seamlessly merging vivid personal experience with insights from literature and the natural world, raises the standard of nature writing. This is both radical manifesto and activism in book form. Her words have helped me to form a deeper connection with my own bodymind and to the bodyminds of others, human and non-human’

Sally Huband, author of Sea Bean

‘Polly Atkin writes with glorious and precise beauty. In Some of Us Just Fall we are asked to reimagine not just the stories we tell about the natural world, but about ourselves and how we live together. This is essential reading’ 

Jessica J Lee, author of Turning and Two Trees Make a Forest

‘Some of Us Just Fall is defiant and dazzling! I was completely submerged in Atkin’s life and its characters: the grey wagtail, her partner waiting in the shade of a tree, the nurses, the heron by the river. By sharing her relationship with water, Atkin has changed mine. Her prose is a beautiful gift’

Freya Bromley, author of The Tidal Year

‘Polly Atkin’s Some of Us Just Fall is a breath of fresh air in the world of nature writing, a many-faceted mountain of experiential truths, a grounded patch of understanding to rest on. Her prose is both brutally honest and tender – she deftly brings the environment into the bodymind, and vice versa.’

Khairani Barokka, author of Indigenous Species, Rope and Ultimatum Orangutan

‘Polly Atkin’s Some of Us Just Fall unpicks the body of the wild, alongside the disabled wilderness of Atkin’s own body. It gives us an experience that is both timely and timeless: of medical gaslighting, a body in pain, and the search for coping strategies out in the natural world. With a poet’s insight and a deep understanding of place, Atkin pulls us again and again to witness the fractured, the breathless, the untameable bodies that permeate her book. I was immersed’

Katie Hale, author of My Name is Monster

‘Polly Atkin has conjured magic in this story of a life touched harshly by illness and misunderstanding, demonstrating a deep connection to the natural world and the voices of the past. Beyond the mesmeric writing on nature and place, Some Of Us Just Just Fall acts as a stark reminder of the implications of misdiagnosis. It is a reminder to remain curious, keep asking questions and open our mind to the possibility that everything is not as it seems’.

 Caro Giles, author of Twelve Moons

‘I came away from this book with a firm understanding that mind, body and environment are three inseparable things’

Joanne Limburg, author of Letters To My Weird Sisters

‘A powerful message surrounded by beautiful immersive nature’ 

Rachel Charlton-Dailey, journalist and founder of The Unwritten

‘Polly Atkin has written a survival story for the rest of us – a book of depth, meaning and resilience in the face of overwhelming adversity – a cathartic read’ 

Allyson Shaw, author of Ashes & Stones

‘In Some of Us Just Fall Polly Atkin, in prose of extraordinary strength and inventiveness, takes her readers on a creative and intellectual adventure across the particularities of embodiment, the insidiousness of the idea of cure, on the body as a site for nature writing, and on living in a place that generates meaning and sustenance in the most unexpected ways. The result is a gift of a book.’ 

Daisy Hay, author of Dinner with Joseph Johnson

Recovering Dorothy: The Hidden Life of Dorothy Wordsworth (Saraband, 2021)

•  longlisted for the Barbellion Prize, 2022.

Poetry Collections

Emergency Dream (Seren, forthcoming spring 2026)

Much With Body (Seren, 2021)

• winner of a Northern Writers Award, 2020.
• a PBS Winter 2021 Recommendation.
• longlisted for the Laurel Prize, 2022.

With Invisible Rain (New Walk Press, 2018)

Basic Nest Architecture (Seren, 2017)

– longlisted for Michael Murphy Award, 2019.
– winner of the Andrew Waterhouse Prize, Northern Writers Awards, 2014.

Shadow Dispatches (Seren, 2013)

– shortlisted for Lakeland Book of the Year, 2014
– winner of the 2012 Mslexia Pamphlet Prize.

bone song (Clitheroe: Aussteiger, 2008)

– shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award, 2009.

As Editor

Ten Poems from the Lake District (Candlestick Press, 2025)

Companions of Nature: A Lake Poets Anthology (Rothay Books, 2019)

Shortform Nonfiction

‘Conversation overheard on a peat bog’ (with Sally Huband), The Book of Bogs: Stories from a Yorkshire Moor and other Peatlands, ed. by Anna Chilvers and Clare Shaw (Little Toller, 2025)

‘My own words for my own world’, Owning It: Our Disabled Childhoods in Our Own Words, ed. by James Catchpole, Lucy Catchpole and Jen Campbell, illustrated by Sophie Kamlish (Faber, 2025)

‘Commonality’, North Country: An anthology of landscape and nature (Manchester: Saraband, 2022).

‘Chronicity’, Sick 3 (July 2021).

‘Croneshadow Stumbles Ahead’, We Are Not Shadows (Folkways, 2021).

”All the living I have left to do’: a disability poetics of dwelling’, Magma 79 (Spring 2021).

‘A heart more wakeful: Nature Lessons with William Wordsworth’, Poet in the City (December 2020).

‘Birds of Lakeland/Birds of Lockdown’ (Podcast/Essay) with Will Smith, Aerial Festival (September 2020).

‘Commonality’, Place 2020, Centre for Place Writing, Manchester Metropolitan University (July 2020).

‘The Road North Through’ (Podcast/Essay), Walking Solo, Lancaster Litfest (July 2020).

‘Swimming against the Nature Cure’ in Ache 3 (April 2020).

Field Notes: Open Mountain (2019), John Muir Trust Blog,

‘Why Is It Always a Poem Is a Walk?’: towards an ecocrip poetics’, New Welsh Review 120 (May 2019).

Poems in Artist’s Books/Anthologies

‘Unwalking’ in Way Makers: An Anthology of Women’s Writing about Walking, ed. by Kerri Andrews (Reaktion, 2023)

‘Hunting the Stag’ in The National Trust Book of Nature Poems, ed. by Deborah Alma (National Trust, 2023)

‘The Limits of Music as Time Travel’ in The Ver Prize 2022 anthology (Ver Poets, 2022).

‘Girl Poets’ in The Book of Bad Betties (Bad Betty, 2021).

‘Fell’ in Women on Nature (Unbound, 2021).

‘Colony Collapse Disorder’ in Staying Human (Bloodaxe, 2020).

‘Uplokkid in Solnes’ [text art] in Through the Locking Glass (Inspired by Lakeland, 2020).

‘Motacilla Flava Flavissima’ in Watch the Birdie (Beautiful Dragons Press, 2018).

‘unshod to meet the flints’ in Waymaking: an anthology of women’s adventure writing, poetry and art (Sheffield: Vertebrate, 2018).

‘Monthlies’ and ‘Leeches’ (from v/s) in Gush: menstrual manifestos for our times (Calgary: Frontenac House, 2018).

‘of love and mountain tops’ and ‘Cold Gathering’ in This Place I Know (Handstand, 2018).

‘Paper Pellets on a Saucer’  in Spark (Blue Diode Press, 2018).

‘Cumbria’ in A Bee’s Breakfast (Thurnham: Beautiful Dragons Press, 2017).

‘Bay of Fundy’ in Not a Drop (Thurnham: Beautiful Dragons Press, 2016).

‘Boron’ in My Dear Watson: The Elements in Poetry (Beautiful Dragons Press, 2016).

‘Jackdaw’, ‘Magpie’ and ‘Pheasant’ in Bird Book III (London: Sidekick Books, 2015).

‘Begin’ in Fish Prize Anthology, 2015.

‘Strength in Winter’ in Heavenly Bodies (Beautiful Dragons Press, 2014).

‘Free Night’ in The Witching Hour (Beautiful Dragons Press, 2013).

‘Lake Fever’ in Lines Underwater (London: 2013).

‘Room’ in Not on our Green Belt (North West Poets, 2013)

‘Looser Verses’ in Modern Poets on Viking Poets ed. by Debbie Potts (Cambridge: 2013)

‘Solstitial’ in Solstice: 24 hours of poetry from the longest day, 2012 (Thurnam: Beautiful Dragons Press, 2012).

‘Seven Nights of Uncreation’ in I have Found a Song (London: Enitharmon, 2010).

‘tree dreams’ in Hand Luggage Only (Cambridge: Open Poetry, 2008).

‘ten poems’ in Bedford Square 2 (London: John Murray, 2007).

 

Poetry Journals/Magazines

‘Pain Parade’, ‘Frog Song’, ‘Fox / Plague Year Season 3‘ in The Aftershock Review, 1 (Summer 2025).

‘Mast Year / Helplessness Subscale’, ‘Gravitas / Rumination Subscale’ in Poetry Review (Autumn 2021).

‘Borders Gothic’, ‘Distraced’ in The Lonely Crowd, 11 (May 2019).

‘Frog Season’ and ‘Pond life’ in The Scores, 6 (May 2019).

‘Note from a Transect’ (poetry) and ‘Notes on Notes from a Transect’ (prose) in Magma 72: Climate Change (November 2018).

‘Imagining’ and ‘Splitting the Vein’ in And Other Poems (July 2017).

‘Strength in Winter’, ‘Perihelion’ and ‘Hurricane Sister’ in The Lonely Crowd (Spring 2016).

‘Ongiara’, ‘Waking the Well’, ‘Solstitial’, ‘Golden’ in The Clearing (December 2015).

‘Propithecus Candidus, 1871’ in The Clearing (October 2015).

‘Fledge’ and ‘The Centre’ in New Welsh Reader, 109 (September 2015).

‘Stay Apparatus’ in 1110/7 (Ghent, 2014).

‘Illustrations of Grasmere Church’ in Magma 57 (London, 2013).

‘Love-in-a-Mist’ in 1110/5 (Ghent, 2013).

‘Pistachios’ and ‘In the Stairwell’, And Other Poems, July 2013.

‘Rabbit in Morning’ and ‘First Kill’, ‘Poetry in Rabbits’, June 2013.

‘Glorious Fellowship of Migraineurs’, Poem of the Week at the Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre, May 2013.

‘Mute’, Sunday Poem on Kim Moore, Poet, April 2013.

‘The Glorious Fellowship of Migraineurs’ in Mslexia 56 (Newcastle, 2012).

‘The book of retreat’ and ‘The Three Halls’ in Rialto 76 (Norwich, 2012).

‘Mute’ in Magma 53 (London, 2012).

‘This Book’ in 1110/3 (Nottingham, 2012).

‘Other People Dream of Foxes’ in Pilot Pocket Book 9 (Toronto, 2012).

‘Hermes Enodios’ in Tellus, 2 (Cambridge, 2011).

‘Jay’, ‘Tumble’, ‘Moon Salutation’ and ‘Heart’ in Flax 018: The Crowd Without (Lancaster, 2009).

‘Accident’ in Rialto 65 (Norwich, 2008).

Chapters in Academic Editions

‘Collaboration, Domestic Co-Partnery and Lyrical Ballads’ in Cambridge Companion to Lyrical Ballads, ed. by Sally Bushell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020).

‘‘Stinking of me’: Transformations and animal selves in contemporary Anglophone women’s poetry’ in The Company of Wolves: Werewolves, Wolves, and Wild Children – Narratives of Sociality and Animality (Manchester University Press, 2020).

‘Paradox Inn: Home and Passing Through at Grasmere’ in Romantic Localities: Europe Writes Places, ed. by Christoph Bode and Jacqueline Labbé (London, Pickering and Chatto, 2010).

‘Ghosting Grasmere: the musealisation of Dove Cottage’ in Literary Tourism and Nineteenth Century Culture, ed. by Nicola Watson (London: Palgrave, 2009).

Interviews/Guest Blogs/Craft Essays/Reviews

‘On Trying To Notice Joy’ for The Friday Poem.

Books of 2019 for The Lonely Crowd.

Interview: David Tait interviews Polly Atkin.

Open Mountain Introduction in John Muir Trust news.

‘Composition Notes: Boggled, Distraced’ in The Lonely Crowd, 11 (May 2019).

Books of 2018 for The Lonely Crowd.

‘Polly Atkin on her February at Gladstone’s Library’: a blog on Gladlib.

‘Poets, past and present’: a blog on Read Regional.

First Collection Interview, on Chrissy Williams.

‘Composition Notes’ in The Lonely Crowd (Spring 2016).

Review: William Wordsworth and The Invention of Tourism, 1820-1900 by Saeko Yoshikawa in The Journal of Tourism History, Vol. 7, Issue 1-2, 2015. 

‘Method: What I think about when I think about Place’ in Cake 6: Lemon Drizzle (Lancaster, 2014).

Review: ‘Windows for Burns Night’, BSECS online.

Craft essay ‘Writ in Water’ and Poems ‘After the Flood’, ‘Out of the Mud’, ‘Bathing’ on the Poems Underwater blog, August 2013.

Review: ‘Atkin on Pollard’, Eyewear.