Here There Be Lions - Animals in Poetry
HERE THERE BE LIONS – ANIMALS IN POETRY. A Small Anthology edited by Paul Nash, Denise La Neve, and Brett Rutherford.
We share the earth with untold numbers and kinds of creatures, and so animals have always companioned us in myth, fable, legend and poetry. “Here There Be Lions” was originally a Latin inscription Hic sunt leoni used to fill blank spaces in world maps, suggesting that, whatever else we did or did not know about terra incognita, its proper landlords were the beasts. And just as no one warned visitors to England, “here there be rabbits,” the warnings were reserved for the kings of their kinds in size or ferocity.
In this collection, the editors have ranged across millennia to find prime examples of poets’ use of animals, whether observed as in natural history, or personified as speaking actors in a drama. The earliest poet here writes in ancient Greek: Archias, a friend of the Roman Cicero, wrote a number of short lyric poems centered on animals, and the best of them are here. From Geoffrey Chaucer around the year 1400 CE in Middle English, we have the tale of Chanticleer and the Fox, itself based on a fable by Marie de France, the oldest French woman writer known by name. The historical survey of animal poems ends with Walt Whitman’s famous lines, “I think I could turn and live among the animals.”
Modern and contemporary poets make up the rest of the anthology. Brett Rutherford has selected animal-themed poems by notable Poet’s Press authors, including the late Emilie Glen and Barbara A. Holland. Denise LaNeve and Paul Nash, editors of three anthologies of New York/New Jersey poets (The Poets of the Palisades series) invited submissions from poets who have been active in the North Jersey poetry series they have run in Teaneck and Wayne, NJ, which draws from an expansive circle of active poets in the region.
As this anthology is small in size and in the geographic scope of authors, it makes no claim to being a definitive collection of animal-themed poems. Instead, it is microcosm of how today’s poets place their visions and voices in and among animals. It is intriguing that most write about the human-animal encounter and relationship, while others attempt to personify and represent the animal on its own terms. More than a “writing prompt,” the animal is a confrontation with the limits of awareness and of consciousness. The animal refutes any claim that knowing its name means knowing its essence.
More topical “small anthologies” are in the works. We hope this collection inspires and provokes its readers.
Published September 2026. This is the 418th publication of The Poet’s Press.
