Ben Smith is a writer and lecturer in Creative Writing at Plymouth University, specializing in fiction, poetry and environmental literature, with a particular focus on oceans, waste and the ‘Anthropocene’. His first poetry pamphlet, Sky Burials, was published by Worple Press, and his poetry and criticism has appeared in numerous journals, magazines and anthologies. He was one of the founding editors of The Clearing, a magazine of writing about landscape and place, and is the co-organiser of Crosscurrents, an interdisciplinary project bringing together writers and marine scientists. His own collaboration for Crosscurrents involved working with a researcher on the Earth System Model and considering how poetry can help us to conceptualise and engage with complex predictive climate science. He also explores many of these ideas in his fiction. His debut novel, Doggerland, will be published by 4th Estate in March 2019.