nature Archives - ClimateCultures - creative conversations for the Anthropocene

Mad Maggie and the Wisdom of the Ancients

Rather than aiming at overt eco-fi or cli-fi markets, Rod Raglin‘s novels use romance, action or mystery genres to feature normal people confronting urgent environmental issues. “Preaching to the converted doesn’t enlist new members in the battle to save our planet. I attempt to write entertaining books that appeal to a larger spectrum of society.”

Maggie was beginning to understand now. If she could cure the lawyer with natural medicines from the forest, then perhaps he would see there was more value in preserving this habitat than working on behalf of its destruction. The Ancients didn’t explain stuff but eventually, it made sense. Made sense to a crazy person anyway.

Rod Raglin is a journalist, publisher of an online community newspaper, photographer and writer of novels, plays and short stories that address the human condition and serious environmental issues.

Most of the books I’ve read written under the emerging genre of environmental fiction (eco-fi, cli-fi) fall into two categories, a dystopic future of environmental degradation (hopeless) or a heroic undertaking, technological or societal, that will radically change civilization before it’s too late (unrealistic).

My approach is different in two ways. First, the characters are normal people engaged in contemporary life who are confronted by an important environmental issue they must address. Secondly, since the environmental issue is a subplot, I don’t specifically market my books as such, but as popular genres like romance, action, or mystery.

Preaching to the converted doesn’t enlist new members in the battle to save our planet. I attempt to write entertaining books that appeal to a larger spectrum of society.

One of my series, ‘Eco-Warriors’, includes five stand-alone novels, each with a strong element of romance. I chose to emphasize romance because this genre dominates the consumer book market – larger than mysteries and speculative fiction (sci-fi).

As well as being the most popular genre, 90 percent of romance readers are women who can bring about huge benefits for the environment. They purchase or influence the purchase of 80 percent of all consumer goods, including home furnishing and products, houses, vehicles, computers and stocks. A woman that’s sensitive to environmental issues could influence the purchase of an energy-efficient vehicle, products from recycled materials, even stocks in a sustainable industry.

When writing environmental fiction, the choice doesn’t have to be between depression or delusion. In all the Eco-Warriors books, as well as my five-book ‘Mattie Saunders’ series, contemporary characters are addressing current environmental issues and coming up with realistic solutions.

The quote above is from Mad Maggie and the Mystery of the Ancients, the third book in the stand-alone Eco-Warriors series, and a love story between two disparate characters, a brilliant though somewhat anal-retentive corporate lawyer whose personal and career mantra is “the will to power”, and a free, uninhibited spirit who practices natural healing on a secluded island in the wilderness. It’s a story about protecting wild things and wild places as well as the devastating effects of mental illness and the stigma society still inflicts on those affected. It’s a story about compromise, tolerance and understanding and how these feelings spring from love and are nurtured by it. It’s about mystery, secrets and power that abounds in nature and within ourselves.

Maggie talks to trees. Dieter talks to corporations.
Maggie embraces mystery and flirts with magic. Dieter adheres to logic and the doctrine of Nietzsche.
Dieter’s client wants to destroy the trees. The trees want Maggie to protect them.
Dieter has terminal cancer. Maggie is schizophrenic.
Maggie says she can save him, if he’ll save the trees. Dieter thinks she’s crazy, but what choice does he have?
A week together alone on Deadman’s Island changes everything for both of them.
Is it madness? Is it magic? Or is it love?

You can buy Rod’s novels online and follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

AHIMSA

“Much of my music is composed as a means to encourage others to think about the possibility of world peace.” Stanley Grill‘s four-piece composition expresses the ancient Jain, Hindu and Buddhist concept of ‘ahimsa’ — ‘non-harm’ in our relationship with the rest of the natural world — in his learning not only from great historic figures but from the example of his own grandfather.

We cannot bring harm to other living beings without bringing harm to ourselves — and that makes ‘ahimsa’ not just a concept related to the peaceful resolution of conflict between humans, but a concept about our place in all of nature.

Stanley Grill is a composer of music that attempts to translate something about the nature of the physical world or promote world peace, sparking positive thoughts and inspiring change.

Much of my music is composed as a means to encourage others to think about the possibility of world peace. During the pandemic, undistracted at home, I wrote a large number of works, one of which included AHIMSA — music inspired by that ancient Indian principle of living in harmony with all living beings. The concept is broader than what I believe most people understand ‘ahimsa’ to mean — it is not just non-violence. It is an understanding that all living creatures on earth are connected. We cannot bring harm to other living beings without bringing harm to ourselves — and that makes ahimsa not just a concept related to the peaceful resolution of conflict between humans, but a concept about our place in all of nature.

The music is in four movements. It begins with music inspired by the principles I learned at home from my grandfather, who as a teenager, fled Poland by himself, to make his way to America. His basic philosophy of life was that every person should strive to become the best person they can be, to realize their potential, but without ever imposing themselves on or harming others. The music then progresses to the great guiding lights — Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and John Lennon — all of whom died while in the pursuit of holding up the candle of ahimsa for all to see. It is hard to think of any who are their match today, but those with their intensity are sorely needed.

AHIMSA extensively uses quodlibets, a technique that’s been used by various composers since medieval times. I researched melodies that were known to Gandhi and Martin Luther King (and in Lennon’s case, several of his songs) and then wove fragments of the melodies into the counterpoint in their respective movements.

AHIMSA (2022) was recorded in the Czech Republic, with Marek Štilec leading the Czech Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra Pardubice. You can listen to AHIMSA at Stanley’s own site — where you can explore more of his Music for Peace and Music for the Earth and his many other compositions — as well as on You Tube Music, Spotify, Amazon Music, and Tidal.

Stanley previously contributed Remember to our Creative Showcase; his collaboration with choreographer and dancer Mariko Endo serves as a reminder of who we are by nature — part and parcel of the earth and all of the life around us. You can find this here in our archive.

Standing Tall, 2022

“We decided that what we could do was to let the trees and the space know they were not alone … in community, communicate to them how deeply they are loved, and to be with them through their impending violation. Action in this sacred sense transcends human politics, bypasses it.”

With composite photography and video, Jennifer Leach — Director of Outrider Anthems, and supported by eco-scenographer Andrea Carr, Outrider Anthems Associate — documents and witnesses creative community resistance to the corporate felling of 112 trees and the sacrifice of a city’s green lung for more concrete.

‘They say that in time we will forget. We will become accustomed to the new environment. No. We learn to endure. We do not forget.’ An Outrider Anthems community intervention on Reading Golf Course, where 112 numbered trees, and countless smaller others, are to be felled to make way for a profit-motivated housing estate. We gently bound each doomed tree with a tie of white muslin, thus making visible what the developers and Reading Borough Council wish to keep invisible: a mutual community of powerful trees and all their interconnected ecosystems, earmarked for destruction. Our human community, having had our record number of planning protests ignored, stand in solidarity with the trees.

Jennifer Leach is a poet, writer, performer and storyteller whose wild work, forged in the fantastical reaches of deep imagination, brings to life new stories for our strange times.

This intervention began with a community desperately trying to safeguard its health, three times resisting a merciless building on one of urban Reading’s few green lungs. It was once agricultural land, then a golf course — until the golfing members handed it over to developers for a princely and undisclosed sum. In almost every way it is an inappropriate development, and yet on the third time of presenting it to Reading Borough Council, and with barely an alteration to the previous two applications, it was suddenly supported and passed. The community had objected with a borough-wide record number of objections, and our distress at the Council meeting was in itself distressing.

The meeting, with its clearly preordained conclusion, was a brazen travesty of the democratic process. The required green links — crucial to the bare survival of species — was, the developer suggested, “hypothetical”. The development, with its 223 largely luxury housing, was going to “improve traffic in the area” and the developers, the Council openly stated “are the ones with the money and they can do what they want.”

“It’s called Capitalism.”

This space is local to me, and in the post-golfing period in which it has rewilded, it has become very special, both to myself and to many members of my community. It is so rich in nature, and in magnificence, particularly in the hundreds of specimen trees that grow in the space. 112 trees are to be felled for the building of the houses, and each tree is unique, each is glorious. They have been categorised by the Council as ‘B – of moderate quality’, ‘C – of low quality’, or ‘U – unsuitable for retention’.

The democratic process was stretched as far as it could be, and appeals were made to central government, but the housing development will go ahead.

Andrea Carr, Associate Director of Outrider Anthems, and I as Director asked ourselves what we could do at this point. Andrea brought her ecoscenographic thoughtfulness and experience to the question, and we decided that what we could do — and we felt it was exceptionally important — was to let the trees and the space know they were not alone. We knew we could and should, in community, communicate to them how deeply they are loved, and to be with them through their impending violation. Action in this sacred sense transcends human politics, bypasses it.

I had the privilege of photographing every one of the 112 trees, and each one of them shared something of their intimate selves with me; they became a gift to me. Andrea came down on the weekend of 1st May and we spent two days measuring out and cutting vast reams of plain white muslin. On 1st May — Beltane in the old Celtic calendar, and a day traditionally associated with the great celebration and honouring of nature — we met with many members of the community and, armed with white muslin and site maps, we spent the day binding each one of the 112 trees to be felled. We stood tall beside them and photographed ourselves standing tall, in solidarity with the trees.

We have conjoined the action of this day with excerpts from the Reading Borough Council planning meeting, to create a composite film entitled Standing Tall. It is currently being screened as a part of the Ecostage contribution to World Stage Design 2022 in Calgary. It hurts to watch it, and it moves. We hope it will be widely shared, and that it will contribute to a changing world in which the sacred spaces and elements of nature become honoured and respected as they once were, and in which the hubris of a capitalist economy finally crumbles under its own insatiable greed. We hope it will inspire others to bear public witness to the non-human victims of human violence, and to stand in love and solidarity with them.

Click on an image to see the full-size series of photographs Jennifer took of the 112 trees.

And you can view more of the intervention with Andrea and watch the videos Jennifer made here at the Outrider Anthems website.

You can find more work at the Outrider Anthems website, and sign up to their mailing list to hear about and support their future projects. And you can explore Jennifer’s work as a writer and artist at her own website.

Art of Shading the Sun

“The project is a reflection on community and landscape and how these interact in space and within time.”

Art of Shading the Sun, a poetic film from Evgenia Emets, speaks from the perspective of the land 100 years in the future, of a community and a landscape moving from extractivist practices to more regenerative approaches.

My time is not your time
My time is wisdom
Coiled beneath the roots
My time is light
The one you know as food
My time is seed
That knows how long it’s due
My time is backwards
From the future towards you
My time is you
The fish within my stream
My time is soil
The keeper of your dream

Evgenia Emets is an artist intersecting land-art, sound and visual poetry through experiences, forests, artist books, calligraphy, performance, objects and community engagement, and whose ‘Eternal Forest’ integrates ecological thinking.

The film (1 hour 40 min, Portugal, 2021) was originally commissioned by Ci.CLO in Portugal as part of an art installation. The project is a reflection on community and landscape and how these interact in space and within time. The installation and film reflect on the centuries of human presence and the current efforts of the community of Mertola to help restore social and ecological balance in this area.

The film is told from the perspective of the land in 2121, a story of the future, with concrete actions in the present. From extractivist practices deeply rooted in our society to the regenerative approaches — through syntropic agriculture, reforestation, local food production, an education rooted in active participation, and the engagement of the whole community into the process.

The film, photographic prints and an installation based on the film in Portuguese and English in 10- and 14-minute video loops, was exhibited in Porto, Bienal 21 Fotografia do Porto, and the Municipalities of Évora, Figueira da Foz, Loulé, Mértola and with EDIA in Portugal, and Fotofestiwal Łódź 2021 in Poland during 2021-2022.

As well as the 14-minute English film above, with the installation poetry, and the equivalent Portuguese version, you can watch the full Art of Shading the Sun film (1 hr 14 mins) in Portuguese. And you can find more at Evgenia’s website and the site of the Eternal Forest project.

Changeling

“I always feel uneasy placing the self at the centre of a piece – the planet doesn’t and shouldn’t care a jot about my own views.”

Julian Bishop‘s poem asks how would the climate feel being messed around in this way – drawing on myths of an evil fairy child substituted for a human baby.

sceptics rubbished me
labelled me a myth ignored the trickle
of microbeads
into basins where I washed

Julian Bishop is a former journalist, environment reporter and tv news editor who writes poetry about eco issues and was runner-up in the 2018 Ginkgo Poetry Prize.

One challenge I consistently come up against as an eco-poet is the use of the first-person ‘I’. Given man is entirely responsible for our predicament, I always feel uneasy placing the self at the centre of a piece – the planet doesn’t and shouldn’t care a jot about my own views.

Coupled to and at odds with this dilemma is the lack of voice for any of the creatures and geographies impacted by our recklessness. Some of the most powerful poetry I’ve read tries to give a voice to the voiceless, e.g. Sue Riley’s fabulous winner of the Ginkgo Prize a couple of years ago, ‘A Polar Bear In Norilsk’. Nobel Prize winner Louise Gluck also writes a nice line from the point of view of plants and inanimate objects, e.g. ‘The Red Poppy’.

My biggest influence though is Alice Oswald, whose 2017 Griffin Prize-winning collection Falling Awake is written almost entirely in the ‘divorced first person’. Oswald shapeshifts changeling-like into dew at dawn (‘A Rushed Account Of The Dew’), a dead body (‘Body’), a shadow (‘Shadow’) and Orpheus’s head floating in a river (‘Severed Head Floating Downriver’). I immersed myself (excuse the pun) in her book before writing ‘Changeling’ to try and decouple from the ego – how would the climate feel being messed around in this way?

Which brings me to the poem itself, which was actually born out of a workshop exploring myth and fairy tales. During a bizarre discussion on types of fae, the changeling cropped up and immediately screamed POEM! at me before vanishing up a chimney flue (that’s what they do best, apparently). Of course the link to climate change was obvious and I began imagining how I could personify it in changeling form.

According to the myth, the changeling is an evil fairy child substituted for a human baby just after birth. Putting a changeling in a fire would cause it to jump up the chimney and return the human child – tales of ways to uncover the true identity of changelings vary from country to country but all were horribly cruel.

I decided to give my ‘climate changeling’ plenty of ugly features –

my moods monsooned I cast spells of rain
wept ice melt
swept by tropical depressions
my skin was fracked organs fragmented

and the chimney flue obviously beckoned for the end of the poem which ensured an unintentionally apocalyptic end. This wasn’t quite the note I hoped to end on but as so often the poem knows where it’s going better than the poet. I can only hope it’s wrong.

I hadn’t heard about Green Ink Poetry until I came across a call-out on Twitter for poems for an issue on Pyres. It’s a two-year-old press with high production values. I looked at their website which has the strapline “We welcome chaos, calamity and the natural world”. My ‘Changeling’ appeared to have found a home.

You can read Julian’s poem Changeling at Green Ink Poetry – and do explore more of his poems and reflections on his experiences of recent times in the pandemic in his On Green Verges, contribution to our special Quarantine Connection series, in September 2020. You can follow Julian on Twitter: @julianbpoet.

Julian mentions Sue Riley’s ‘A Polar Bear In Norilsk‘, which you can find in the free Ecopoetry Anthology from the 2019 Gingko Prize. And Louise Gluck’s ‘The Red Poppy‘ was published as The Guardian’s poem of the week (23/8/2021). Alice Oswald’s collection Falling Awake is published by Penguin, and you can read a poem from it at the link.