We regularly review fiction, non-fiction books and poetry collections, as well as events and other resources. Here is an updated list of reviews to date (most recent posts at the top of each category), from James Aldridge, Claire Atherton, Clare Crossman, Nancy Campbell, Chris Fremantle, Mark Goldthorpe, Matt Law, Beckie Leach, Helen Moore, Sally Moss, James Murray-White, Genevieve Rudd, Nicky Saunter, Joan Sullivan, and Mary Woodbury.
Books
— Fiction
Deconstructing our Dominion Stories in a Time of Unravelling
Nick Hunt‘s debut collection of stories, Loss Soup and Other Stories, reviewed as a pair with Charlotte Du Cann’s non-fiction After Ithaca: Journeys in Deep Time – books that embrace the unknown, helping us navigate our collective uncertainty and explore what it means to be human in a time of Anthropocene unravelling. Reviewed by Joan Sullivan (19/7/22).
Where Waters and Fictions Meet
Eight novels about water where fact and fiction mingle, tied by imagination, to reveal important truths about our shifting relationships with this vital and lively agent in an era of climate crisis. Reviewed by Mary Woodbury (5/7/22).
The Gift of Stories
Jim Crace’s 1988 novel, The Gift of Stones, set at the end of the Stone Age, on the cusp of change that accelerated us headlong into a new world. Reviewed by Mark Goldthorpe (25/6/18).
The Colour of Flamboyant Flowers
Jean Rhys’ novel of alienation, displacement, colonialism and the ‘othering’ of difference of race and gender, told in multiple voices: Wide Sargasso Sea. Reviewed by Mark Goldthorpe (29/4/18).
Stalking the Impossible
Geoffrey Household’s brilliant 1939 combination of thriller and landscape writing: Rogue Male. Reviewed by Mark Goldthorpe (31/1/18).
What Use is Grief to a Horse?
“One great thing about being in the adjustment business: you’re never short of customers.” Equus, Peter Shaffer’s 1973 play. Reviewed by Mark Goldthorpe (27/10/17).
A People of the Fall
The Inheritors, William Golding’s 1955 classic reimagining of the lost world of the Neanderthals. Reviewed by Mark Goldthorpe (30/5/17).
Bringing Our Monsters Back Home
Grendel, John Gardner’s haunting 1971 novel revisits the ancient tale of Beowulf and speaks to us about ‘Othering’ the natural world, and how our monsters insist on coming back in. Reviewed by Mark Goldthorpe (3/4/17)
— Non-fiction
Ecoart in Action – Provocations to Creative Engagement
Edited by Amara Geffen, Ann Rosenthal, Chris Fremantle, and Aviva Rahmani, Ecoart in Action presents ecoart activities, case studies and provocations. This last of three collaborative posts is a review of Section 3: ecoart case provocations, by Claire Atherton, Beckie Leach, Genevieve Rudd and Nicky Saunter (27/4/23).
Ecoart Case Studies – Theory into Practice
Edited by Amara Geffen, Ann Rosenthal, Chris Fremantle, and Aviva Rahmani, Ecoart in Action presents ecoart activities, case studies and provocations. This second of three collaborative posts is a review of Section 2: ecoart case studies, by Claire Atherton, Beckie Leach, Genevieve Rudd and Nicky Saunter (2/3/23).
Ecoart Activities – Working With Place & People
Edited by Amara Geffen, Ann Rosenthal, Chris Fremantle, and Aviva Rahmani, Ecoart in Action presents ecoart activities, case studies and provocations. This first of three collaborative posts is a review of Section 1: ecoart activities, by Claire Atherton, Beckie Leach, Genevieve Rudd and Nicky Saunter (10/1/23).
Grasping the Intangible — Our Climate Change Predicament
Mike Hulme’s Climate Change explores how the idea of climate change is shaped and used in different ways and how its meanings help us navigate climate change as predicament rather than problem. Reviewed by Mark Goldthorpe (28/10/22)
Assembling the Raven’s Nest
Sarah Thomas‘ The Raven’s Nest, an ecological memoir that addresses love and loss and coming to belong in the Westfjords peninsular of Iceland, evoking human and more-than-human relationships to draw out stories of interdependence. Reviewed by Chris Fremantle (29/8/22).
Deconstructing our Dominion Stories in a Time of Unravelling
Charlotte Du Cann’s After Ithaca: Journeys in Deep Time, reviewed as a pair with Nick Hunt‘s debut collection of stories, Loss Soup and Other Stories – books that embrace the unknown, helping us navigate our collective uncertainty and explore what it means to be human in a time of Anthropocene unravelling. Reviewed by Joan Sullivan (19/7/22).
Seeing Nature’s Wonders in the Human Heart
Susan Holliday’s Hidden Wonders of the Human Heart: How to see through your sorrow – a creative guide to revelation and renewal. Reviewed by James Murray-White (28/2/22).
Seasons of Nature’s Gift and Natures Lost
Anita Roy and Pippa Marland’s Gifts of Gravity and Light, an anthology of twelve distinct and diverse voices on our changing seasons and our relationships with the natural world and our own biographies within it. Reviewed by Mark Goldthorpe (30/11/21).
Queer River and Creative Engagements with Ecologies of Place
Iain Biggs’ Creative Engagements with Ecologies of Place: Geopoetics, Deep Mapping and Slow Residencies (2021), and resonances with projects exploring the value of outsiders’ viewpoints and voices not often heard in discussions on the Earth Crisis. Reviewed by James Aldridge (23/9/21).
Bringing It All Back Home
Dara McAnulty’s Diary of Young Naturalist (2020), a remarkable testament to love for the natural world and a key to finding a sense of living in and caring for it as our shared home. Reviewed by Mark Goldthorpe (8/6/21).
A Year of Wonders Under a Circling Sky
Neil Ansell’s The Circling Sky (2021), an account of a year-long immersion in England’s New Forest, is both a guidebook to close observation and a reflective elegy to place and belonging. Reviewed by James Murray-White (16/1/21).
Owned by the Wood in Winter
John Lewis-Stempel’s The Wood in Winter (2016) is elegant exploration of life — wild nature and human — in the harshest season, and offers an Anthropocene question: who owns the land? Reviewed by Mark Goldthorpe (31/12/20).
Rising — Endsickness and Adaptive Thinking
Elizabeth Rush’s Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore (2018) reveals a contemplation of transience, connection and the possibilities of resilience, through her close examination of the experiences of climate and coastal change in America’s wetlands. Reviewed by Mark Goldthorpe (25/3/19).
“Attending to the World’s Extraordinary Surprise”
Robert Bringhurst and Jan Zwicky’s Learning to Die: Wisdom in the age of climate crisis (2018) — a captivating and challenging read that urges the cultivation of human virtues in a time of crisis and the rejection of lazy thinking. Reviewed by James Murray-White (19/2/19).
“Firestone Far Beneath Our Feet”
Cornerstones – subterranean writings (2018, edited by Mark Smalley) — a new collection of writing explores how all landscapes — from Dartmoor to the Arctic Circle — begin below the surface of the earth. Reviewed by James Murray-White (8/1/19).
The Mirrored Ones
Future Remains: A Cabinet of Curiosities for the Anthropocene (2018, edited by Gregg Mitman, Marco Armiero and Robert S Emmett) — an important and absorbing book whose collection of objects offers a mirror test for our supposed ‘Age of Human’, reviewed by Mark Goldthorpe (19/12/18).
Reading Nature’s Archives in the Library of Ice
Nancy Campbell’s The Library of Ice: Readings from a Cold Climate (2018), vividly combining memoir, scientific and cultural history with accounts of landscape and place. Reviewed by Sally Moss (5/11/18).
Energetic: Exploring the past, present and future of energy
Energetic, a wide-ranging collection of essays, photography, creative pieces and interviews from the Stories of Change project (edited by Joe Smith and Renata Tyszczuk, 2018). Reviewed by Mark Goldthorpe (6/8/18).
In the Path of Its Beam
Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, the classic 1974 account of her life in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. Reviewed by Mark Goldthorpe (15/3/18)
Anticipatory History
Anticipatory history, a collection of short essays exploring key terms and themes in landscape and wildlife change (edited by Caitlin DeSilvey, Simon Naylor & Colin Sackett, 2011). Reviewed by Mark Goldthorpe (13/8/17).
— Poetry
The Start of Something Going Wrong
Her Whereabouts, a new collection from ClimateCultures member Joanna Guthrie, weaves her mother’s debilitating strokes with ecological loss in the climate crisis into a poetic memoir. Reviewed by fellow ecopoet Helen Moore (1/8/23).
All the Little Gods Surrounding Us
All the Little Gods Surrounding Us, a collection of poems and images from ClimateCultures member James Roberts, is a creative expression of the natural world’s ‘being-ness’ and a way for us to deepen our own presence within the more-than-human. Reviewed by James Murray-White (13/7/20).
An Invitation to Act: Letters to the Earth
Letters to the Earth: Writing to a Planet in Crisis, a collection of poems, essays and other letters offered in response to a public call in April 2019 that was inspired by Extinction Rebellion actions and Global Youth Strikes (2019, edited by Anna Hope, Jo McInnes, Kay Michael and Grace Pengelly). Reviewed by Clare Crossman (14/2/20).
Out of Range
Out of Range (2018), ClimateCultures Member Nick Drake’s new collection, celebrates proximity and distance — spatial, temporal or emotional — to remark on the state we’re in, and take the reader on a journey through known worlds and into unknown ones. Reviewed by Nancy Campbell (24/1/19).
Events
— Exhibitions
“Summon the bravery!” Encounters at Small Earth
Small Earth, a November 2018 conference for psychotherapists, ecologists, economists, philosophical and spiritual thinkers to address hope for future living within the ecosphere. Reviewed by James Murray-White (30/11/18).
Of Fire, Ice & Earth
Fire & Ice, a 2017 exhibition by photographers Gina Glover & Jessica Rayner and potter Hilary Mayo, at GroundWork Gallery in King’s Lynn. Reviewed by James Murray-White (10/11/17).
— Performances
Climate Conversations to Save the World
An online performance of Coney’s How We Save The World. Reviewed by Matt Law (10/3/21).
“Water’s Rising, at Their Ankles Now…”
James Phillips’ play Flood, produced by Slung Low at Hull, City of Culture 2017. Reviewed by James Murray-White (10/10/17).
— Workshops
Conserve? Restore? Rewild? Ecopoetics and Environmental Challenge
Conserve? Restore? Rewild? Arts and Ecopoetics Rise to the Challenge, a one-day event on our responses to environmental crisis at GroundWork Gallery in Kings Lynn, September 2018. Reviewed by James Murray-White (11/9/18).
The Art of Noise
ClimateSymphony Lab, a one-day workshop to develop a musical performance from climate change data, organised by Disobedient Films at ArtsAdmin in London in June 2017. Reviewed by Mark Goldthorpe (23/6/17).
On Night in the Daytime
The Night Breathes Us In: a day and night of explorations, provided by The Dark Mountain Project as part of Outrider Anthems’ year-long Festival of the Dark in Reading. Reviewed by Mark Goldthorpe (30/3/17).
TV & Radio broadcasts
A Questionable Shore
Into the Wind, a poetic film by Richard Alwyn for BBC, following writer and naturalist Tim Dee as he explores the edgelands of the Wash, in search of a pure wind. Reviewed by Mark Goldthorpe (15/4/17).
Apps
Taking the World for a Walk
The Deep Time Walk app, from Deeptimewalk.org. Reviewed by Mark Goldthorpe (14/7/17). And in Unpacking Deep Time in Our Living Present (14/5/19) Mark also reviewed the latest addition to accompany the app: an attractive and engaging set of cards that explores our planet’s 4.6 billion year timeline and offers us thoughtful paths into the living present.
