Practice Archives - ClimateCultures - creative conversations for the Anthropocene

Conversational Drift and Artistic Inquiry: Thinking With The Harrisons

Transdisciplinary artist Sarah Strachan offers a practice-based researcher’s perspective on Thinking with the Harrisons. The book explores how this renowned eco-artist duo’s responsive, ‘conversational drift’ approach suggests how artistic inquiry can remain open to ecological complexity and uncertainty.

1,820 words: estimated reading time = approximately 7.5 minutes

Thinking with the Harrisons: Re-imagining the Arts in the Global Environment Crisis Art offers an exploration into the pioneering and prophetic work of eco-artist duo Helen Mayer Harrison (1927-2018) and Newton Harrison (1932-2022) in conversation with the writings of Isabelle Stengers and Alfred North Whitehead’s concepts of process philosophy. The authors, Anne Douglas and Chris Fremantle, position the Harrisons not as historical figures to be interpreted from a distance but as collaborators whose approaches continue to shape contemporary ecological art. This shift — from thinking about to thinking with — is central to the book’s structure and argument. It reframes the Harrisons’ practice as an ongoing, relational inquiry rather than a closed body of work, and it invites readers to inhabit the methodological openness that characterised their ecological engagements.

“Rethinking the arts in the environmental crisis involves questioning the conventions of art and their appropriateness for a rapidly changing world just as Whitehead’s search for a different philosophy of nature involved him questioning the foundations of science and Stengers, the questioning of the cultural values of technoscience.”

— Thinking with the Harrisons (2024, p. 105)

Showing the cover of the book 'Thinking with the Harrisons' by Anne Douglas and Chris Fremantle, 2024

The book is described by educator, artist and researcher, Iain Biggs as “an unusual and highly important text” that focuses on “how the Harrisons’ unfolding process addresses a series of fundamental and pressing ecological questions”.¹ However, for me, its most significant contribution lies in its articulation of thinking with and conversational drift as methodological frameworks. For practice-based researchers like me, these concepts are not merely descriptive of the Harrisons’ approach; they constitute an epistemic orientation and methodological process for engaging with ecological complexity, multispecies entanglement, and climate-related transformation.

Thinking with: a relational epistemology

The concept of thinking with emerges throughout the book as an epistemic orientation grounded in relationality, responsiveness, and co-production. To think with the Harrisons is to enter the same mode of inquiry that animated their practice: a willingness to be transformed by the ecological, social, cultural, and political contexts one encounters.

For practice-based researchers, thinking with is significant because it challenges the assumption that research begins with a stable problem or a fixed set of methods. Instead, it suggests that ecological research must be co-constituted with the systems it engages. Thinking with becomes a form of methodological humility — an acknowledgement that ecological knowledge is distributed across species, landscapes, and processes, and that the researcher’s role is to participate in these distributed networks of sense making. Douglas and Fremantle emphasise that thinking with is not a metaphorical gesture but a practical orientation. It shapes how the Harrisons approached sites, collaborators, and ecological crises. It also shapes how the book itself is organised: as a polyphonic assemblage of voices, perspectives, and disciplinary positions that collectively enact the relational ethos of the Harrisons’ work.

Conversational drift: methodology as movement

If thinking with provides the epistemic orientation, conversational drift provides the methodological process. Conversational drift describes the Harrisons’ characteristic way of working: beginning with a question, entering dialogue with collaborators (human and more-than-human), and allowing the conversation to move in unexpected directions. Crucially, drift is not a lack of focus; it is a method of ecological attunement. It can mean both “the motion and the result of that motion”.² It mirrors the dynamics of ecological systems, which are non-linear, iterative, adaptive, and relational. Drift allows the work to follow ecological cues rather than impose a predetermined structure. It is a methodology that privileges openness and emergence. For practice-based researchers, conversational drift offers a model for how artistic inquiry can remain open to ecological complexity without becoming overwhelmed. It becomes a way of navigating uncertainty — of allowing the research to unfold in relation to the shifting conditions of the ecological systems it engages.

The book highlights that the Harrisons’ conversations were never limited to human interlocutors. Their work is filled with dialogues with watersheds, species, coastlines, and climatic forces. These conversations are not symbolic; they are methodological. They reflect the Harrisons’ commitment to treating ecological entities as collaborators with agency.

“Conversation in this work is not limited to people but to the interaction between elements in the landscape shaped by human self-interest in the form of farming, paper mills, channels, levees and inevitably toxic pollution. The idea of joining the ‘odd kind of dialogue’ in which ‘the business of the universe/is conducted’ (Seventh Lagoon/91) here becomes the discourse of that place.”

— Thinking with the Harrisons (2024, p.102)

Conversational drift, in this context, becomes a way of listening to ecological processes. It requires the researcher to attend to signals that may not be verbal or human-centred: the movement of water, the behaviour of species, the shifting of coastlines. It becomes a method for recognising that ecological knowledge is co-produced across species and systems. This more-than-human conversational method anticipates contemporary multispecies and post-humanist scholarship, yet the Harrisons’ approach remains grounded in material processes. Their conversations with landscapes are informed by ecological data, fieldwork, and site-specific observation. Here, conversational drift is both conceptual and operational.

Showing 'Book of the Lagoons' by Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison, from the book 'Thinking with the Harrison', 2024

Mapping, scale, and systems thinking

Both thinking with and conversational drift are deeply entangled with the Harrisons’ commitment to systems thinking. The authors emphasise the Harrisons’ ability to drift across different scales — from lagoon to watershed to planet. This movement is not arbitrary; it reflects the ecological reality that local phenomena are embedded within larger systemic dynamics. For practice-based researchers, this raises important methodological questions. How can artistic practice operate at scales that exceed the human sensorium? How can research remain grounded in local specificity while attending to planetary processes?

The book suggests that thinking with and conversational drift offer a way through this tension. They allow the work to move fluidly between scales, guided by the ecological relations that emerge through conversation. Scale becomes a drifting relation rather than a fixed parameter.

The Harrisons’ conversational texts — hybrid forms of poetry, dialogue, and ecological proposition — are central to their practice, and the book treats them as methodological artefacts. These texts embody conversational drift in their structure: they move between voices, temporalities, and epistemic registers, refusing closure in favour of ongoing inquiry. For practice-based researchers, these texts demonstrate how writing can function as a site of ecological experimentation. The drift of language becomes a method for exploring ecological futures that are not yet materially realised. Thinking with becomes a textual practice as much as an ecological one.

Critical reflections: the limits of drift and relationality

The book presents thinking with and conversational drift not as perfected research methodologies but as ongoing, situated practices that must continually negotiate their own limitations. Drift can be difficult to reconcile with institutional structures that demand clarity, deliverables, and measurable outcomes. Thinking with requires time, trust, and relational labour that institutions often undervalue. Whilst these attributes of the method offer potential for art practice-based research, as artists and researchers we need to work within the constraints of these institutional structures.

There is also a risk that drift, if unexamined, can obscure issues of power and representation. Who participates in the conversation? Who is authorised to drift? As Grant Kester acknowledges, “voices that run contrary to official wisdom often take longer to locate and are more difficult to hear”.³ Whilst the authors foreground these tensions by recognising that “systems continue to reveal and confirm biases and structural inequalities”⁴ and “the arts and the environment and conservation movements are still characterised by a lack of cultural diversity”,⁵ there is a reliance on artists from within the Eurocentric hegemony in the chapter titled thinking with one another. This references artists immanent in the Harrisons’ work, who have furthered it through experimentation or of the same generation with similar concerns but using different approaches; although, as outlined in an earlier article on the Harrisons, their enquiry has focused primarily on artistic practices that openly acknowledge the Harrisons’ influence.⁶

Showing 'Portable Fish Farm: Survival Piece' by Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison, from the book 'Thinking with the Harrisons', 2024.

A methodological invitation

The authors position thinking with and conversational drift as evolving and generative methodologies for ecological art in the era of climate crisis. They offer a way of engaging with ecological complexity that is adaptive, relational, and open to transformation. They challenge artists and practice-based researchers to cultivate methods that are responsive to ecological systems that embrace uncertainty and that recognise conversation — human and more-than-human — as a form of ecological agency.

“Could the Harrison’s key contribution lie in how they share their learning in such a way that those who follow grasp their experience with clarity? Unlike the world of art and its proprietorial character, the Harrisons are not afraid of other people making use of their work”

— Thinking with the Harrisons (2024, p. 214)

In this sense, the book is not simply a retrospective on the Harrisons’ work but a methodological invitation. It claims that the Harrisons’ legacy is not a set of works but a way of working that remains urgently relevant. It asks us to continue thinking with the Harrisons by allowing our own practices to drift — toward new collaborators, new scales, and new ecological futures.

Sarah’s references

[1] Biggs, I., 2024. Thinking with the Harrisons: Re-imagining the Arts in the Global Environmental Crisis: A review

[2] Strachan, S., 2023. A drift in conversation: Across hierarchies and beyond boundaries. Journal of Arts Writing by Students. (Bristol, UK; Intellect Publishing. p. 92.)

[3] Kester, G., 2004. Conversation pieces: Community and communication in modern art (University of California Press, Berkeley. p.172.)

[4] Brain, T., 2018. The environment is not a system. A Peer-Reviewed Journal About, 7(1), pp.152-165.

[5] Douglas, A. and Fremantle, C., 2024. Thinking with the Harrisons. Reimagining the Arts in the Global Environment Crisis. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

[6] Douglas, A. and Fremantle, C., 2023. Thinking with the Harrisons: what does now demand? Field: a journal of socially-engaged art criticism, 23.

Find more

Thinking with the Harrisons: Reimagining the Arts in the Global Environment Crisis, by Anne Douglas and Chris Fremantle, is published by Leuven University Press (2024).

Anne Douglas (Professor Emerita, Gray’s School of Art, Robert Gordon University, Scotland) has written about the book at the Leuven University Press blog (September 2024).

You can explore the work of Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison at The Harrison Studio.

Craig Adcock was the first to use the term ‘Conversational drift’ as the process undertaken by the Harrisons. It was the title of an article which documented a conversation between the three of them. He writes: “The title ‘conversational drift’, which they suggested, is meant to reflect both the process of interchange that occurred between us and also to suggest how their ecologically orientated art function in general: their work sets up situations both in art galleries and in the halls of government that encourage the conversation to open up, to change, and to drift toward innovative and creative solutions to real world problems.” (Conversational Drift: Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison, Adcock, Craig: Art Journal, Volume 51, Issue 2 (1992) p. 45)

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From 2026, ClimateCultures is inviting members to say a sentence or two about how they use AI in their work and in their posts for us. We will be exploring this in future posts here and at our ClimateCultures & more Substack.

Sarah – “In my practice, I enter into deep conversations with people, place, the land and its materials. More recently this has also specifically involved conversations with generative AI, which is helping me to explore the concept of more-than-human conversation further. Therefore, the development of this review has been informed by conversations with all these entities.”

Sarah Strachan

A transdisciplinary artist exploring through printmaking, painting and ceramics how perceptions of being in, knowing and belonging to the world affect our ecological awareness and thinking.

Rise and Fall – A Short Film-Poem About Connection

Artist and writer James Roberts shares Rise and Fall, his short, award-winning film-poem, which gives us all space, an invitation to find calm, to experience our local rivers, to find a practice of connection and show some reverence.

1,300 words: estimated reading time = 5 minutes + 5 minutes video

Rise and Fall developed from a short visit to the Cambrian Mountains above the Elan Valley dams one spring afternoon. I was trying to film red kites with my drone, but the kites had other ideas, disappearing over the peaks at speed. So instead I decided to do a shot of the little River Elan, starting almost at its surface, then sending the drone as high as it would go.

Showing a clip from 'Rise and Fall', a film by James Roberts, 2025. — A clip from ‘Rise and Fall’, a film-poem by James Roberts, © 2025.

Rise and Fall — a film-poem

When I viewed the footage later, a poem began to write itself about the experience — about the high drift and growing distance, which seemed like a metaphor for where we are now in relation to the natural world. The further we rise, the more distant it gets. Rivers, it seems, show us where we are.

After that I began visiting other rivers whenever I was out and about, filming them handheld and up close, or floating the drone above them to record their contours: the Wye, the Lugg, the Cleddau, the Dart, and a few of their tributaries. I hadn’t set out to make a film, but that poem wanted to do more than just sit on a page. It wanted to be a film-poem.

Luckily I was told about the upcoming Rivers of Film Festival and encouraged to send in a film treatment. Even more luckily the film was accepted and then went on to win the inaugural Clare Crossman Prize. The process of making a film was a real adventure for me, for which I’m very grateful.

There’s so much in the news these days about the state of our rivers. They’re polluted, choked with sewage, nitrates, harmful bacteria. It’s the water companies’ fault, or privatisation, or chicken farms. But these are symptoms, not causes — indicators of a wider disconnection with the natural world which continues to widen. Rivers show us what we’re doing to the earth, our attitude towards it, our now-distant relationship with it. Everything flows into them: our poisons, but ultimately our ideas and ideologies.

It seems like there’s headway being made in the fight to save our rivers. Good souls are measuring nitrates, monitoring streams, building networks, litigating. They’re raising hundreds of thousands of pounds for this fight. Meanwhile, the great rollout of AI is being backed by every government and major investment company, estimated to cost tens of trillions in the next decade. As part of this, our children are being encouraged to develop relationships with companions that don’t exist. They’re being connected deeper and deeper into the wiring of machines. Machines that consume billions of litres of water. Will the rivers be spared?

What is the most important thing?

This is what I want to see: a farmer walking down to a nearby stream first thing in the morning, before they start their long workday. When they reach it, they spend a few minutes watching and listening. Then they bow. Or a group of children on their way to school going to the riverbank to drop flowers from their gardens into it, watched smiling by their investment banker parents. This is not part of some new-age religion — it’s simply a practice of connection. Start the day with something important. Show some reverence.

Showing a clip from 'Rise and Fall, a film-poem by James Roberts, 2025. — A clip from ‘Rise and Fall, a film-poem by James Roberts, © 2025.

I remember reading about a man who visited a reservation in the US hoping for some instruction on how to live better. Two elders led him out into the desert early one morning. They told him to bring nothing, just to sit until they told him he could return to the village with them. They left him there for two hours. When they returned they asked him one question: What is the most important thing in life?

He thought about what they might want to hear and said: family. They shook their heads and walked away.

Two hours later, with the sun now reaching its zenith, they returned and asked the same question.

“Friends,” he answered.

They walked away again.

After another two hours they asked the same question. Again, the wrong answer. And again.

By late afternoon it was 100 degrees in the shade, and the man wasn’t in the shade. Again he gave them the wrong answer.

The next time he could barely speak. His head was spinning, there were sparks in his eyes, and his throat was like a sand chute.

“What is the most important thing in life?” they asked again.

“Water,” he croaked. “Water!”

They smiled, picked him up, embraced him, and let him drink before returning to the village.

Practices to reconnect

Showing the title clip from 'Rise and Fall', a film by James Roberts 2025. — ‘Rise and Fall’, a film-poem by James Roberts, © 2025.

My little film-poem ends with the line: “If you want to, you can find your way back” (sorry for the spoiler). I’m not trying to preach, only to offer a viewpoint in the most simple way I can. For me, we have to find practices that reconnect us to the real, to move away from the virtual. Find our way back to what we are — animals, dependent on other animals, the soil, the rivers. That reality will return to us whether we like it or not.

The film is deliberately slow; you might find the pace frustrating. It’s shot in black and white, as simple as I could make it. This is to give us all a little space. Nick Sergent composed a beautiful cello soundtrack, which helps slow the piece down further. It’s an invitation to calm, and hopefully a way for you to reconnect with your local river.

Find more

You can view Rise and Fall here.

James Roberts is an artist and writer based in the Welsh Borders. For more of his writing, subscribe to intothedeepwoods.substack.com, where he writes about establishing practices of connection to the wild. His website is: seariverwood.com.

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James – “I do use AI. It’s an efficient spellchecker, it’s good at helping me fix my old car, and it’s excellent at interpreting Tarot decks. I don’t use it for creative work: AI ideas are pretty useless to me. I do think, however, that it will replace most professional creatives in the near future. This is already happening in the design industry where I used to work. See above for how it impacts the environment. Therefore, like meat and plastic, it should be consumed sparingly. I’m already weaning myself off it despite only experimenting with it for a few months.”

You can read about the Clare Crossman Prize, which James was awarded at the Rivers of Film Festival in Cambridge, here at Clare Crossman’s website. A ClimateCultures member, Clare (1954-2021) was a poet with a deep connection with the natural world and with place, which this prize celebrates. Along with filmmaker James Murray-White and other local champions of the River Mel in Cambridgeshire, Clare created the Waterlight Project, a website and film inspired by the chalk stream.

You can read more about the Rivers of Film Festival that James Murray-White devised and curated in Cambridge (September to October 2025) in his recent piece for our Creative Showcase, our growing portfolio of new and recent works from ClimateCultures members. The festival was commissioned by Cambridge Past, Present & Future as part of the RiverCamCAN Project (Climate Action Through Nature), and funded by the National Lottery Community Fund. Further screenings of the 10 films commissioned for the festival are planned around the UK — including at the Living Water exhibition in Cambridge (20th March – 5th December 2026) — the screenings on 28th May (University Library) and 25th June (Pembroke College) — and at the River Summit in Henley, September 2026 (date TBC).

James Roberts

A writer and artist who teaches practices of connection to the wild, author of 'Two Lights', and with artwork exhibited in several galleries in the UK.

When Mr Jones … On the Artist, Responsibility & Linear Thinking

Citizen artist Yky challenges fellow artists to consider their roles and responsibilities, alongside those of scientific experts, in how their art engages audiences and other citizens to overcome linear thinking in questions of urban resilience and social complexity.

1,110 words: estimated reading time = approximately 4.5 minutes

When Mr. Jones realised what time it was, he knew he would be late for the opening of his exhibition. He spent the journey thinking up excuses he could give. But none of them seemed very credible, and he arrived at the gallery feeling somewhat apprehensive.

Upon arrival, he found the atmosphere rather festive and wasn’t sure whether to feel offended or comforted by the fact that no one seemed to care about his tardiness. In one room of the gallery, a guest was looking at one of his works with a puzzled expression. The owner of the premises seemed to be ignoring him, so Mr. Jones felt obliged to introduce himself and was then asked the question we have heard so often: «But what did you mean by this work?» Mr. Jones replied with something we have also heard so often: “My goodness, it’s certainly not up to me to tell you what to think. Everyone is entitled to feel what they want.”

The art & the message

Dear readers of ClimateCultures, rest assured, Mr. Jones — who could just as easily have been called Monsieur Dupont or Herr Schmidt — serves only to make us reflect on the paradox of certain artists who consider that their work must be sociologically significant while refusing to consider the objective dimension necessary for understanding their message. For if there is one point on which everyone should agree, it is on the growing complexity of the social model we all wish for.

Let us be clear. Feelings, emotions, and everything that words cannot express obviously contribute to the very essence of the artistic process. And nothing should prevent or challenge this. But if an artist wishes to use his or her talent to work on complex subjects such as sustainability or urban resilience, then they acquire, whether they like it or not, a responsibility towards the community. From that point on, understanding the message that accompanies the artistic process becomes all the more important. And to paraphrase Emmanuel Levinas in his wonderful concept of alterity, “When the Other looks at my work, whether I like it or not, whether I want it or not, the simple fact that He looks at my work makes me accountable to Him.”

During the ‘Art of Resilience’ exhibition at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. ^[1], I reiterated in one of the opening speeches the importance of our responsibility in addressing the challenges we face, and considered how we can facilitate dialogue between artists, scientists and ‘non-expert citizens’. In this regard, a fictional narrative can be a powerful tool for sharing ideas and connecting with urban citizens while contextualising the pedagogical process.

Shakes, a diptych: D0 and D+ Artist: Yky © 2018

Those who are interested can find more information in a previous post I published on ClimateCultures — see the note below.

Resilience & the problem of linear thinking

Beyond the concept of resilience thinking ^[2], what is striking is the gap between the interest that many artists have in topics such as sustainability or urban resilience and their understanding of what defines these topics. It is almost as if this interest were sufficient in itself. But understanding why and how linear thinking impacts our ability to invent a more resilient way of life is essential.

Rooted in the legacy of the Enlightenment, linear thinking has enabled a scientific revolution that we benefit from today. But at the same time, this rationality, this thinking based on the idea that the world is governed by universal laws and that nature is only meant to be domesticated, hinders our ability to develop unconventional societal models. So how can we move from ‘bouncing back’ to ‘bouncing forward,’ a key condition for urban resilience?

In the recent history of scientific research, one of the most important advances in breaking free from linear thinking was proposed by C.S. Holling ^[3], one of the founders of ecological resilience. With his theory of panarchy, he introduced the idea that not only are social and ecological systems interconnected, but they also restructure and renew themselves in response to their environment.

That said, I can already hear the arguments of some artists who believe that scientists are responsible for getting the message across. But many scientists do recognise that they are unable to communicate effectively to ‘non-expert citizens’ and that art is a powerful vehicle for communication. It is up to artists and scientists to leave their comfort zones in view of their collective responsibility.

Interestingly, challenging linear thinking is not solely a scientific endeavour. Isn’t that what Kandinsky did with his early compositions, introducing lines and colours with intrinsic value rather than mere representations of external forms? ^[4]

As Mr. Jones made his way back home, he reflected on the recent conversation he had had. He had no reason to feel uncomfortable, and yet a sense of helplessness overwhelmed him. The idea that a neo-liberal environment could affect our sociability suddenly frightened him. He wished he could help to promote new behaviours built on the sense of care. He wondered whether his artistic skill could, in some way, contribute to improving our well-being. Without really understanding why, Mr. Jones was overcome by a feeling of vulnerability. He would have liked to discuss it with other artists.

Linear thinking: Showing an image by Yky of Le Havre's seaside, France, (Argentic paper, print size 60 x 40 cm), where the reflections in pieces of broken mirror refer to our vulnerability, and the silver paper frame, darkening over time, to that of uncertainty. — Le Havre’s seaside, France, (Argentic paper, print size 60 x 40 cm): Photograph 2023 © Yky. The reflections in pieces of broken mirror refer to our vulnerability, and the silver paper frame, darkening over time, to that of uncertainty.

***

Yky adds: I hope this post can lead to challenging talks with other artists on ‘our’ collective responsibility and the way it should be implemented, along with scientists. A good example of bouncing forward and non-linear thinking.

Find more

The Art of Resilience – exhibition catalogue (World Bank, 2019)
Art, a pedagogic tool for urban resilience (at Yky’s Picturing Urban Resilience website)
Panarchy: ripples of a boundary concept (Rocha, Luvuno, Rieb, et al, 2022: Ecoplogy & Society 27(3):21)
Bouncing forward with abstraction (at Yky’s Picturing Urban Resilience website)

You can read Yky’s earlier ClimateCultures post, Urban Resilience? Art, the Missing Link, where he shares Shakes, his work featured in the World Bank’s The Art of Resilience exhibition, and a fictional encounter between the artist, a resilience expert and two citizens to discuss the role of artist and scientist. And in The Art of Reimagining Managed Retreat, he shares ideas and artworks he presented to an international conference addressing scientific, social, and governance issues around ‘managed retreat’.

Yky

A citizen artist exploring urban resilience whose photographic works use silver paper's response to light to highlight the challenges raised by climate hazards in urban spaces.

“Radical Noticing” – Adding to the Road Map

Poet and writer Joanna Guthrie introduces her essay for our Longer feature, on her experiences finding deeper connection with and through trees. Here, she reflects on writing and ‘radical noticing’, asking: how else to deal with the times?

870 words: estimated reading time = 3.5 minutes

Longer is the place for works that don’t fit within the normal ‘short reads’ format of our blog: essays, fiction or other forms that haven’t appeared online elsewhere and explore in more detail the creative responses to our ecological and climate crisis. With each new Longer piece, the author introduces it here with an original post, where they can reflect on the motivation or inspiration behind the work or the process of creating it.

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Sitting and looking around and watching things get worse and waiting for them to get still worse, and wondering if we can smell burning: that, at best, is what life is like as we move through the extraordinary times of the Earth Crisis, and one of the ways I deal with it is to write.

My essay, We Run On – Connection, Grief, Trees, People, is taken from a collection of linked essays which share a theme: how else to deal with the times? What are some of the responses I’m finding interesting, useful or pattern-making? What are some of the conversations that are happening – on podcasts; among my friends who are working out their activism; around the table? The angle, broadly, is how the crisis — and thoughts of the crisis — can hit psychologically and what some of us might be trying to do about this; what some of the ways through might be.

So, the title of the collection is Trying Not to Lose It. The pieces are coming along in the form of lyric essays, exploded essays, poetic journalism, nature writing, diary pieces. All I know is, they’re not poems, which are my more usual medium.

“Radical noticing”

The process can feel much like Arthur C Clarke’s description of getting information from the internet: “like getting a glass of water from the Niagara Falls.” The chatter about the crisis is everywhere, of course; omnipresent and with endless different angles. It’s almost ludicrously overwhelming. And the disciplines interweave. And a lot of the people conducting the chatter, and leading the ideas, are very stressed, understandably. And heartbroken. I keep blinkers on as I pick my way through, and trust my instinct regarding which strand to pick up — most strands lead somewhere interesting, and can form unlikely braids with other strands; this is writing, I suppose.

I just want my writing to be useful. And I believe in the act of paying witness to things. I think of Kathleen Jamie’s notion of how paying attention is potentially a political act in itself — radical noticing, as she calls it.

I also think of Mary Oliver’s famous lines in ‘The Summer’s Day’

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?

What else should I be doing? Things being quite urgent, I don’t want to waste airspace or anyone’s time in reading. So there‘s a particular sense of responsibility: I’m doing this because I couldn’t care more about it, and wish to be an effective messenger. Or a sort of cartographer — to add to the road map we are constructing as we go on together, up the mountain, trying our hardest not to lose it.

I want to get the pieces I am writing out there in accessible ways so I can add to the map as quickly as possible. Thank you ClimateCultures for putting this one out there. I am looking for other places – and am open to ideas.

***

Joanna’s full essay, We Run On – Connection, Grief, Trees, People, is the fifth piece for our Longer feature, which provides space to explore in more depth creative and critical responses to our ecological and climate crisis.

Find more

Joanna mentions poet Kathleen Jamie’s notion of ‘radical noticing’. You can find this in a 2021 interview with Jamie in The Guardian, Scotland’s new makar Kathleen Jamie: ‘Poetry is at the heart of our culture’: “We’re equipped with these senses that have come with us through millions of years of evolution, and to stop for a moment and use them to notice a blade of grass or a cobweb in the window, means we’re saying ‘Stop. Everybody shut up for a minute, including myself, stop telling me what to think, what to believe in.’ Maybe a radical noticing could be part of our solution. If you’re stopping to notice, you’re not actually trashing [the planet].”

You can find more of Joanna’s writing at her website, and work published by Dark Mountain, Trying Not to Lose It (2021) and The Guardian The Florida Keys are the canaries in the climate-change coalmine (2017).

In The Start of Something Going Wrong, fellow ClimateCultures member and ecopoet Helen Moore reviews Joanna’s 2023 collection, Her Whereabouts.

Joanna Guthrie

An ecopoet and a non-fiction writer who seeks deeper connections to nature and to bear witness to these Anthropocene times in a way that feels true.

Living Waters, Sentient World & Co-operative Inquiry

Writer Peter Reason explores the possibilities of learning to unhook ourselves from taken-for-granted perspectives, finding ways to invoke the living presence of a sentient world through co-operative inquiry with humans and waterways as participants in a kinship ecology.

1,890 words: estimated reading time = 7.5 minutes

How can those of us enculturated into a Western worldview engage with our world as sentient, as responsive, as kin? This is the question we address in Living Waters, our series of on-line co-operative inquiry workshops involving both human and River persons; the next workshops run online from 11th March to 29th April 2025 and usually attracts an international participation (see below for registration details).

In these inquiries we have been asking questions of the kind:

What would it be like to live in a world of sentient beings rather than inert objects? How would we relate to such a world? And if we invoke such a world of sentient presence, calling to other-than-human beings as persons, might we elicit a response?

These questions focus our attention on whether we experience our world as something ‘out there’, which however wondrous and valuable is nevertheless separate from humans; this is the taken-for-granted perspective in Western society. Or is the world an animate presence, experienced as kin, as “all our relations”?^[1] as do my Indigenous and Settler colleagues in Western Australia, who write in ‘Seeing, feeling, and hearing the world’:

… the ways we see, feel, and hear the world is associated with how we relate to and respond to our places. If we see the ground we walk on and the places we live in as animate, responsive, and relational, we are highly likely to care for Country with love, gentleness of spirit and fullness of heart. We are all able to hear and participate in the music, the soundscape of our places – to honour and celebrate the lyrics of life’. ^[2]

This way of seeing allows Indigenous people in their traditional cultures to experience the places they live – places their people have inhabited for tens of thousands of years – as living and responsive, with the whole community of beings as participants in a kinship ecology. These Indigenous elders draw on words that don’t translate easily, if at all, into English – pirlirr in Walmatjarri, liyan in Nyikina, and wirrin in Noongar – words that refer to a visceral way of knowing shared by people, all beings, and land itself. Through this way of seeing, feeling, and hearing Country, people know that “when you care for Country, Country will care for you”. ^[3]

When we use the terms Country (capital C), Land (capital L) or River (capital R) we refer to a broader, stronger, Indigenous use of the English language concepts of country, land, and river. These terms refer to places as relational, animate socio-ecosystems that are living and responsive. Country, Land and River include people as participants in a kin-centred ecology of being.

Sentient world: showing a brook in Wiltshire. Photograph by Peter Reason — By Brook in Wiltshire. Photograph: Peter Reason © 2023

Beyond brute matter

Those of us socialized into a Western way of being have been taught to think of humans and nature as separate and mutually exclusive opposites. In Western culture, although some of the ‘higher’ mammals are credited with intelligence, by and large the other–than–human is experienced as brute matter, only of value in so far as it serves human purposes. This perspective is clearly in error, as it has proved to be astoundingly destructive of the quality and complexity of the planetary ecology. Can we Westerners find this quality of relationship, can we learn to see our world in the way of kinship? Writer Amitav Ghosh entreats us to listen once more to the voices of the more-than-human world:

Voices that have stubbornly continued to insist, in the face of unrelenting, apocalyptic violence, that nonhumans can, do, and must speak. It is essential now, as the prospect of planetary catastrophe comes ever closer, that those nonhuman voices be restored to our stories. The fate of humans, and all our relatives, depends on it. ^[4]

Living Waters inquiries are based not only on Indigenous perspectives but are rooted also in Western philosophy, specifically contemporary ‘living cosmos panpsychism’ which has its roots in the writings of Spinoza. We understand our world not as inanimate ‘stuff’ but as imbued from its origins with some kind of innerness – call it mind or sentience. Everything is integral to the fabric of the living cosmos, all of the same sentient cloth. And from this we see that all beings form a communion of subjects, reaching out to each other in mutual contact and communication, co-creating a ‘poetic ecology’: the fundamental erotics of being touched by the world and touching it in return. If we invoke a world of brute stuff, as is normal in Western society, then that is what we will experience. If we invoke the world as sentient presence, we may be graced with a response – as the living world configures itself on poetic, metaphorical response to our invocation, a process Freya Mathews refers to as ontopoetics.

Showing the tonfluence of the Wiltshire Frome with the Bristol Avon. Photograph: Peter Reason © 2023 — Confluence of the Wiltshire Frome with the Bristol Avon. Photograph: Peter Reason © 2023

Co-operative inquiry with the more-than-human

The point of our inquiries is to learn to unhook ourselves from taken-for-granted perspectives and to explore ways of invoking the living presence of a sentient world. This is where Cooperative Inquiry comes in, a profoundly democratic approach to learning about and making sense of our world. This approach to living inquiry has three central characteristics that make it profoundly suitable for panpsychic inquiry because it treats all those involved – human and more-than-human – as subjective self-directing beings and therefore as equal participants in the inquiry process. It also emphasizes the experiential ground form of knowing, and it asserts the primacy of practice.

In orthodox scientific research the roles of subject and researcher are mutually exclusive, the researcher contributes the thinking that goes into the project, the subjects contribute the action to be studied. In co-operative inquiry these exclusive roles are replaced by mutual relationships. All involved work together both as co-researchers and co-subjects. Everyone is engaged in the design and management of the inquiry; everyone contributes to the questions to be asked and how to go about exploring them; everyone participates in the experience and action that’s being explored; everyone is involved in making sense and drawing conclusions; everyone draws on the learning from the inquiry in their future practice.

Sentient world: Showing swans on the Bristol Avon. Photograph by Peter Reason — Swans on the Bristol Avon. Photograph: Peter Reason © 2022

So how does this apply to the Living Waters workshops? We start with each participant identifying a River or waterway near where they live which they can engage with as a living, sentient being. They may sit with or walk by River, offering it quite simply attentive love. This can evolve into ceremony, gift-giving, song, prayer, always addressing River as a living being, always attentive to River’s response. We ask participants to compose accounts of their experiences and share these with an inquiry group of about six of their fellows; and periodically through the eight weeks of the workshops we work as a whole community of about twenty human persons to identify themes and shared questions. These cycles of inquiry are punctuated by seminar sessions at which the faculty offer perspectives on a view of the world as sentient – living cosmos panpsychism, biopoetics, place-based ecology, Gaia theory – which may inform the inquiry process.

Personal encounters – towards a sentient world

About one hundred human and River persons have participated in this inquiry process over the past four years. Our encounters with Rivers drew forth a wide range of responses, both inner and outer.

For many co-inquirers the initial challenge was to get over the internal voices that questioned the whole activity – this even though they joined the inquiry sympathetic to its aims. We all needed to quieten our minds and hush our expectations sufficiently to give fuller attention to River. Many found themselves at first distracted and self-absorbed.
Once inner voices were somewhat quietened, it was still easy to drop into a traditional subject-object relationship, to look at the river as still ‘out there’.
However, with persistence, practice, and support from the human inquiry community, most were able to sustain a feeling of sentient presence, and then move into what one group called ‘getting in the zone’. This is the experience of a sentient, embodied world, and of one’s own animal body as part of it; usually accompanied by intense feelings of pleasure and gratitude, maybe wonder and enchantment at the sheer beauty of it all.
Going deeper, there sometimes arose a curious juxtaposition of the ordinary and the extraordinary; and close to that a profound feeling that the ordinary is all extraordinary.
Some inquirers also developed a complex imaginative or psychic response, as if the world is somehow ‘speaking’ directly in words and images. In time, many participants found themselves ‘slipping under the psychic skin of the world’ or ‘lifting the veil’, with the illusion of separation slipping away.
Finally, there are on occasion active ontopoetic responses, ‘moments of grace’ when the world and its beings actively gesture back in response to invocation: animals and birds appear; there is a gust of wind or a shower of rain; leading to narratives of experience incontrovertibly linked to one’s invocation.

Sentient world: Showing Offering to River Fowey. Photograph by David Peters — Offering to River Fowey. Photograph: David Peters

Many participants report experiences of a sentient and responsive world that are deeply felt, unassailably authentic. Such experiences have an authority of their own. They offer intimations of a world quite different from the materialist, brute world into which we moderns are socialized. As an outcome, our metaphysical assumptions are radically re-arranged. It is evident that experiences of a sentient, communicative world are available not just to Indigenous people living in traditional cultures, but to all human persons willing to put in the time, the attention, to risk their taken-for-granted sense of self, and to open themselves to that possibility.

Notes

[1] Linda Hogan (1995), Dwellings: A spiritual history of the living world (originally published by Simon and Schuster, 1995; 2007 edition by W. W Norton & Company. )

[2] & [3] Kankawa Nagarra Olive Knight, Anne Poelina and Sandra Wooltorton, Seeing, Feeling, and Hearing, and the World.

[4] Amitav Ghosh (2021, John Murray. P.57), The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a planet in crisis; italics in original.

Find more

The next iteration of the online Living Waters co-operative inquiry runs from 11th March to 29th April 2025.

Peter mentions several perspectives on the living world that the Living Waters inquiries draw on in their Cooperative Inquiry seminars: living cosmos panpsychism, biopoetics, place-based ecology, Gaia theory, Ontopoetics and narratives of experience. Peter has written extensively on these approaches, including Learning How Land Speaks and at his website.

In Peter’s previous post for us, Bristol Climate Writers Presents … ‘Desert Island Books’ — a collaborative piece with fellow members of both ClimateCultures and BCW on fiction and non-fiction books they discussed at a public event — he talks about – Learning to Die: Wisdom in the Age of Climate Crisis by Robert Bringhurst and Jan Zwicky, and The Overstory by Richard Powers. He also contributed Lines Written While Reading Hunger Mountain to Day 4 of our Quarantine Connection series during the first UK lockdown of the Covid-19 pandemic. And with his Songs for Earth, featured in our Creative Showcase, he asks: How does one sing in the face of the ecological crisis — the disruption of the process of life itself, permanent loss of evolutionary complexity, permanent endings of patterns of being?”

Peter Reason

A writer linking the tradition of nature writing with the ecological crisis of our times, drawing on scientific, ecological, philosophical and spiritual sources and participatory perspectives.