This is the complete ClimateCultures blog archive for 2018: 39 original posts contributed by 22 of our members. Our 2018 authors were:
Nancy Campbell, Rebecca Chesney, Clare Crossman, Lucy Davies, Nick Drake, Sarah Dry, Mary Eighteen, Mark Goldthorpe, Brit Griffin, Mike Hembury, Wallace Heim, Salli Hipkiss, Jennifer Leach, Robynne Limoges, Lisa Lucero, Julien Masson, Sally Moss, James Murray-White, Veronica Sekules, Deborah Tomkins, Ottavia Virzi, Mary Woodbury.
You can read our posts for 2021 so far, and explore posts from 2020, 2019 and 2017. And you can also explore all our posts by category – or by author in our sidebar.
December 2018
Earthrise
by Mark Goldthorpe
31 December 2018
Gifts of Sound and Vision
800 words: estimated reading time 3 minutes
For Gifts of Sound & Vision, Mark Goldthorpe chooses Earthrise — a film about a moment a half-century ago that transformed our vision of the world and what might be possible in this short historic episode, modern human civilisation.
The Mirrored Ones
by Mark Goldthorpe
19 December 2018
Review
960 words: estimated reading time 4 minutes
ClimateCultures editor Mark Goldthorpe reviews Future Remains: A Cabinet of Curiosities for the Anthropocene. This book’s objects offer a mirror test for our ‘Age of Human’ — and conceptual links to A History of the Anthropocene in 50 Objects.
Sweeping the Dust
by Mike Hembury
12 December 2018
Creative Works
960 words: estimated reading time 4 minutes
Writer and photographer Mike Hembury read Deborah Tomkins’ post on how grief and hope feature in the work of fellow ‘climate writers’, and shares a poem in response to his own research into these experiences under climate change.
November 2018
“Summon the bravery!” Encounters at Small Earth
by James Murray-White
30 November 2018
Review
1,490 words: estimated reading time 6 minutes
Filmmaker James Murray-White describes taking part in the Small Earth conference within the stunning beauty of Snape. At this special event, psychotherapists, ecologists, economists, philosophical and spiritual thinkers gathered to address hope for future living within the ecosphere.
A Personal History of the Anthropocene – Three Objects #9
by Nick Drake
16 November 2018
A History of the Anthropocene in 50 Objects
1,080 words: estimated reading time 4.5 minutes
Poet Nick Drake offers poems of three dark objects that illuminate our world-shifting ways: an emblem of inefficiency, a single-use convenience that will outlast us, and a nightmare taking shape beneath our feet, our streets, our notice, until…
Reading Nature’s Archives in the Library of Ice
by Sally Moss
5 November 2018
Review
1,460 words: estimated reading time 6 minutes
Writer Sally Moss reviews Nancy Campbell’s The Library of Ice: Readings from a Cold Climate. Rich in detail (microscope and dictionary, as much as library) its landscapes, eras, expeditions, personalities and planetary prognoses pile up like brash ice.
October 2018
Time and Tide: Waiting for the Gift of Sound and Vision
by Mark Goldthorpe
29 October 2018
Gifts of Sound and Vision
1,530 words: estimated reading time 6 minutes + 15 minutes video
ClimateCultures editor Mark Goldthorpe launches a series exploring film and audio that open a space to reflect on change — choosing pieces on how human and non-human animals live, and how processes of time and tide shape our coasts.
Grief, Hope and Writing Climate Change
by Deborah Tomkins
12 October 2018
Challenges of Creative Engagement
2,880 words: estimated reading time 11.5 minutes
Writer Deborah Tomkins chairs Bristol Climate Writers, who meet to critique their poetry, science or nature writing, short stories or novels. She shares their discussion on ‘climate grief’ and how psychological responses to climate change influence their writing.
September 2018
Artists’ Climate Lab
by Lucy Davies
27 September 2018
Cultural Change
1,230 words: estimated reading time 5 minutes
Royal Court Executive Producer Lucy Davies — a participant in Creative Climate Leadership training in 2017 — explores Artists’ Climate Lab, a special week of creative activities she and others devised for artists working in London’s leading theatres.
Conserve? Restore? Rewild? Ecopoetics and Environmental Challenge
by James Murray-White
11 September 2018
Review
930 words: estimated reading time 3.5 minutes
Filmmaker James Murray-White reviews a recent event with GroundWork Gallery and the British Ecological Society: a gathering of poets, academics, and ecological minds exploring our responses to environmental crisis through a day of ecopoetics, provocations and wild conversations.
August 2018
Signals from the Edge #2: Wildfire and Fox
by Brit Griffin
Signals from the Edge
1,490 words: estimated reading time 6 minutes + 4 minutes video
Writer Brit Griffin lives in Cobalt, Canada — a town that was born during the 1903 mineral rush. She shares a powerful account of signals to be detected in Cobalt’s burning forests and the cry of a fox.
Naturalist
by Clare Crossman
22 August 2018
Creative Works
1,300 words: estimated reading time: 5 minutes
Poet Clare Crossman follows the first six of her illustrated poems on nature and climate change with the second of two selections from In the Blackthorn Time and other poems, her collaboration with artist Victor Ibanez, including Naturalist.
In the Blackthorn Time
by Clare Crossman
15 August 2018
Creative Works
1,400 words: estimated reading time: 5.5 minutes
Poet Clare Crossman created a sequence of illustrated poems on nature and climate change for an appearance at Pivotal Festival in 2016. Here, she offers a short introduction and the first half dozen, including In the Blackthorn Time.
Energetic – Exploring the past, present and future of energy
by Mark Goldthorpe
6 August 2018
Review
2,010 words: estimated reading time 8 minutes
ClimateCultures editor Mark Goldthorpe reviews Energetic: Exploring the past, present and future of energy, a book that weaves together different strands from the Stories of Change project, excursions into what energy means and work by the project’s artists.
July 2018
The Riddle of the Trees: A Paean for the Natural World
by Salli Hipkiss
31 July 2018
Creative Works
2,560 words: estimated reading time 10 minutes
Writer and artist Salli Hipkiss shares an extract from her novel’s manuscript — a glimpse into the heart of the story and its forest, and further into the development of character, meaning and writing for the ‘We Generation’.
Rocks Pools in the Desert
by Robynne Limoges
25 July 2018
In the Elements
800 words: estimated reading time 3 minutes + 1 minute gallery
Photographer Robynne Limoges shares a series of evocative abstract images that reflect her feelings on the critical issues of increasing water scarcity and expanding desert — imagining ‘the last bowl of water I will have at my disposal’.
If the Anthropocene is Violence, What is Nonviolence?
by Mark Goldthorpe
21 July 2018
Conversations
1,860 words: estimated reading time 7.5 minutes
Writer and editor Sally Moss works with nonviolence education organisation Commonweal, and she suggested an interview for their blog. Sally’s questions were a great opportunity to touch on some of the deep connections between climate change and violence.
Placing the Sea
by Wallace Heim
11 July 2018
Challenges of Creative Engagement
1,560 words: estimated reading time 6 minutes
Researcher and writer Wallace Heim recently completed ‘the sea cannot be depleted’, her online project exploring the military exploitation of the Solway Firth. Wallace shares her reflections on the inspiration behind this powerful project and her creative process.
June 2018
The Gift of Stories
by Mark Goldthorpe
25 June 2018
Review
2,270 words: estimated reading time 9 minutes
ClimateCultures editor Mark Goldthorpe reviews Jim Crace’s imaginative 1988 novel, The Gift of Stones. Set on the cusp of change at the end of the Stone Age, a book could hardly be more relevant to the emerging Anthropocene.
My Voice in the Climate Change Crisis
Challenges of Creative Engagement
1,320 words: estimated reading time 5.5 minutes
Poet and artist Salli Hipkiss, in the first of two posts, reflects on how she came to understand the urgent challenges of climate change, and decided to write The Riddle of the Trees, a novel supporting positive change.
A History of Eco-fiction, Part 2
by Mary Woodbury
8 June 2018
Speculative Worlds
2,360 words: estimated reading time 9.5 minutes
Author Mary Woodbury, who outlined some of the common ground that helps ‘define’ eco-fiction in Part 1, looks at how this super-genre has grown and diversified in recent years. Her story returns to a family trip to Ireland.
May 2018
A History of Eco-fiction, Part 1
by Mary Woodbury
31 May 2018
Speculative Worlds
1,900 words: estimated reading time 7.5 minutes
Author Mary Woodbury opens a two-part series on the development of eco-fiction: a form with many roots, which is “not so much a genre as a way to intersect natural landscape, environmental issues, and wilderness into other genres.”
The Call of the Forest
by Julien Masson
23 May 2018
Challenges of Creative Engagement
1,630 words: estimated reading time 6.5 minutes
Artist Julien Masson describes a residency in the New Forest, an environment that juxtaposes natural and human worlds, and his choice of a physical paint medium to represent the digital realm that often distances us from the natural.
Adorning Our New Biosphere
by Mark Goldthorpe
15 May 2018
Preview
1,530 words: estimated reading time 6 minutes
ClimateCultures editor Mark Goldthorpe explores the call for a creative symposium on ‘how to love the postcarbon world’, our new biosphere. Can art, creativity, imagination actually help us to break free of our seemingly unbreakable pattern of thought?
Art, Rise Up!
by Ottavia Virzi
3 May 2018
Art & Eco Activism
1,010 words: estimated reading time 4 minutes
Artist Ottavia Virzi describes a recent intervention by Art Rise Up, the creative collective bringing art and activism together for environmental protection, in support of the campaign to halt opencast coal mining, using art to engage cultural meaning.
April 2018
The Colour of Flamboyant Flowers
by Mark Goldthorpe
29 April 2018
Review
2,830 words: estimated reading time 11.5 minutes
ClimateCultures editor Mark Goldthorpe reviews Wide Sargasso Sea, the classic novel by Jean Rhys: her prequel to Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, and a story of blurred, alienation, displacement, colonialism and the ‘othering’ of difference in race and gender.
The Ocean as Abject: Painting as Installation
by Mary Eighteen
11 April 2018
Environmental Change
1,290 words: estimated reading time 5 minutes
Visual artist Mary Eighteen updates us on work that imagines a world where the ocean is on the trajectory to extinction. Here, Mary focuses on concepts of ‘framing’ as a means to provide the visual encounter with abjection.
March 2018
Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Maya Kings
by Lisa Lucero
29 March 2018
Cultural Change
1,210 words: estimated reading time 5 minutes
Anthropologist Lisa Lucero researches the emergence and demise of political power, ritual and water management among the Classic Maya. Her most recent project explores collapsed groundwater sinkholes for evidence of ancient Maya offerings and climate and landscape histories.
In the Path of Its Beam
by Mark Goldthorpe
15 March 2018
Review
2,900 words: estimated reading time 11.5 minutes
ClimateCultures editor Mark Goldthorpe reviews Annie Dillard’s 1974 wonder-filled book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. A classic, it nonetheless resists easy classification and explores, in equal measure, horror and beauty in nature: fixing both with Dillard’s hallmark unblinking stare.
Black Haiku: Poems for Dark Times
by Robynne Limoges
5 March 2018
In the Elements
620 words: estimated reading time 2.5 minutes + 1 minute gallery
Photographer Robynne Limoges shares evocative images inspired by the haiku form, in her pursuit of the ‘philosophical dilemma of how much light is required to dispel darkness and just how it is to be found and held close.’
February 2018
Signals from the Edge #1: Pale.Blue
by Mark Goldthorpe
28 Feb 2018
Signals from the Edge
1,840 words: reading time 7.5 minutes
ClimateCultures editor Mark Goldthorpe sets a new challenge: create small expressions of the more-than-human in the form of a signal for humanity. His inaugural signal appears as an alien encyclopedia entry cast adrift, backwards in time and space…
The Gift of the Goddess Tree
by Jennifer Leach
22 Feb 2018
Creative Works
790 words: estimated reading time 3 minutes
Artist Jennifer Leach shares another story she performed as part of Festival of the Dark’s micro-festival Dazzle. It’s a tale of transformation: stretching imagination, shifting vision as key to waking us up. What if the world were other?
What the Bee Sees
by Jennifer Leach
15 Feb 2018
Creative Works
1,500 words: estimated reading time 6 minutes
Artist Jennifer Leach shares a story about bees, honey, hexagons and robotics. What the Bee Sees is the first of two stories Jennifer performed at the Festival of the Dark’s micro-festival Dazzle. What if the world were other?
Near / Far
by Rebecca Chesney
9 Feb 2018
Environmental Change
1,360 words: estimated reading time 5.5 minutes
Visual artist Rebecca Chesney, whose location-specific work is informed by her research and conversations with scientists, describes her experiences of drought and tree death in California while on a residency and shares some of the images she produced.
A Personal History of the Anthropocene – Three Objects #8
by Sarah Dry
5 Feb 2018
A History of the Anthropocene in 50 Objects
2,130 words: estimated reading time 8.5 minutes
Science historian and writer Sarah Dry offers objects past, present and future that help us investigate clouds and the gap between seeing and feeling. ‘What is not revealed often plays more powerfully in the imagination than what is.’
January 2018
Stalking the Impossible
by Mark Goldthorpe
31 Jan 2018
Review
2,680 words: estimated reading time 10.5 minutes
ClimateCultures editor Mark Goldthorpe reviews Geoffrey Household’s outstanding 1939 thriller, Rogue Male: a brilliant piece of landscape writing and a novel of slowly revealed relationships, between individual and society; human and more-than-human; surface and subterranean; cunning and culture.
A Personal History of the Anthropocene – Three Objects #7
by Nancy Campbell
22 Jan 2018
A History of the Anthropocene in 50 Objects
2,120 words: estimated reading time 8.5 minutes
Poet Nancy Campbell chooses a child’s bone kayak, a wooden paddle, innovative metal islands: three objects that demonstrate how the past and present elide as our environment changes and how, whatever choices lie ahead, travel is always forward.
A Personal History of the Anthropocene – Three Objects #6
by Veronica Sekules
15 Jan 2018
A History of the Anthropocene in 50 Objects
1,300 words: estimated reading time 5 minutes
Curator Veronica Sekules shares three Anthropocene objects that mark the movement from a visionary symbol of eternity, to the hubris of a transitory age and on to a time which will be witnessed by what endures after us.