Fiona Benson lives in Devon and is one of the country’s foremost poets, three times shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and winner of the Seamus Heaney First Collection Prize, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and Forward Prize for best collection.

As part of the process of writing these poems Fiona joined the Devon Wildlife Trust to visit beavers on the River Otter, explored a solar farm, and swam in Exeter’s prize-winning St Sidwells Point, the UK’s first Passivhaus swimming pool and leisure centre complex.

Of her involvement in Net Zero Visions Fiona said: ‘I found writing these poems a really constructive way of engaging with climate change, causing me to refocus on the positive changes that can be made rather than the ruin that lies behind us. I was heartened by the positive growth of clean energy, as well as by the wonderful passivhaus leisure centre that makes fitness and swimming available to all, and of course by the beavers who are helping us learn how to manage water, watermeadows and flooding. The project made me feel that it is possible for humans to pull back from the brink.”