Chris Southgate is a poet, editor and theologian based on the edge of Dartmoor, Devon, England. He works at the University of Exeter as a Professor in Theology.
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Poetry
Chris has been publishing his poetry since 1985. He is the author of nine collections of poetry, including a verse biography of T.S. Eliot – A Love and its Sounding (Salzburg, 1997). Chris has won a number of awards for poetry. He was also commended in the 2009 National Poetry Competition, and shortlisted for the 2022 Bridport Prize.
- Book Chris for readings, workshops and commissions
- Read some of his poems
- Read about Chris’s part in the commemorations of the 50th anniversary of the death of T.S. Eliot
Chris’s most recent poetry collection ‘Losing Ithaca’ (Shoestring 2023) is now available from centralbooks.com or by emailing Chris on . It contains a sequence of poems tracking his grief at the death of a dear friend, a sequence around the number six (starting with ‘Six Reasons why I am in love with Greta Thunberg’), and a series of meditations on the Passion and Resurrection of Christ.
Chris has also published ‘Rain Falling by the River: new and selected poems of the Spirit’, (Canterbury Press).
Editing
Chris co-edited the regional poetry magazine Otter from 1989-96. He has also edited the journal Reviews in Science and Religion, and the important textbook on the science-religion debate God, Humanity and the Cosmos.
From 2023 Chris has taken over the editorship of the Journal of the T.S. Eliot Society (UK). The Journal, from the 2024 issue onwards, can be viewed open-access at tseliotsociety.uk.
Theology
Chris has taught at the University of Exeter since 1993. His main fields of study are the science-religion debate, ecotheology and environmental ethics, and Christian poetry. He welcomes enquiries from prospective research students. His exploration of divine glory led to the book Theology in a Suffering World: Glory and Longing (Cambridge University Press, September 2018).
His current teaching includes the undergraduate module ‘Evolution, God and Gaia’, and the MA module ‘Poets and the Religious Imagination’. His book The Groaning of Creation: God, Evolution and the Problem of Evil (Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), described as ‘quite excellent’ (Church Times), has become a seminal text in the exploration of the problem of suffering in nature. Chris summarised the field in the Cambridge Element, ‘Monotheism and the Suffering of Animals in Nature’ (Cambridge University Press, 2023).
From 2017-21 Chris was Project Director for a major new project in practical theology, aimed at identifying good practice after a congregation has suffered a sudden tragedy. For details see tragedyandcongregations.org.uk. This project was funded by the Templeton World Charities Foundation Inc.
From 2023-25 Chris convened a project funded by the British Academy on suffering and struggle in non-human nature. This led to the six-authored book ‘God, Struggle and Suffering in the Evolution of Life’, to be published open-access by Bloomsbury in October 2025. See evolutionarytheodicy.org for details.
Chris also teaches for Spiritus College (formerly SWMTC), and is a Visiting Scholar at Sarum College.
Science
From 2018-20 Chris was also Principal Investigator on a scientific project entitled ‘Cooperation and interpretation in the emergence of life’. This project was funded by the John Templeton Foundation.