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Conserve? Restore? Rewild? Ecopoetics and Environmental Challenge

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.

930 words: estimated reading time 3.5 minutes

Groundwork Gallery, run by powerhouse director Veronica Sekules, backs up its exhibitions of work focusing on the environment with events that deepen the discussion. This combination brings us in as participants, helping us to sharpen our understanding and to critically engage with the issues.

Conserve? Restore? Rewild? Arts and Ecopoetics Rise to the Challenge was one such bringing-together — the last of the 2018 season — with poets, academics, and ecological thinkers-and-doers gathering in a wonderful 14th-century building by the edge of the lapping River Ouse. This special event — organised with the British Ecological Society — gave us a day to dive deep, listen and engage with ideas of ecopoetics at the crossroads of conservation, restoration, and re-wilding. An opportunity to question all these options and find the best fit.

Ecopoetics and provocations

Ecopoetics - Judith Tucker and Harriet Tarlo talking about their work at a previous GroundWork Gallery event — Judith Tucker and Harriet Tarlo talking about their work at a previous GroundWork Gallery event
Source: www.groundworkgallery.com

Curated by poet Harriet Tarlo and artist Judith Tucker, whose collaborative project on the disused Louth Canal is on display at Groundwork, the day divided into discussions on rewilding and on art or eco-poetic contexts. Andrew Watkinson, Professor of Environmental Sciences at UEA, offered a provocation in his ‘reflections upon a changing environment’, reminding us of the ‘environment as natural capital’ approach that is so favoured by politicians and business leaders. He referred to the schism of thinking on this, as exemplified by leading green writers George Monbiot and Tony Juniper; it reminded me of a debate between the two men that I filmed at the New Networks for Nature conference in 2015.

What was refreshing about this presentation was Professor Watkinson’s deep engagement with poetry as a source of inspiration and knowledge, which he wove through his scientific explanations of the processes of change and the interactions within an ecological framework.

By bringing into his talk Cambridgeshire-poet John Clare, Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queen and Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Andrew gave a range and breadth to the provocation. And this came after renowned ecocritic and writer Richard Kerridge delivered a polemic on the world of ‘new’ nature writing: “Why is it difficult to write about environmental crisis?” he asked us; and “Where is climate change? Everywhere and tangibly no-where”.

Andrew Watkinson
Photograph: Pippa Lacey © 2018

Richard ranged from unpicking ideas of ‘adaptations of scale’ through to exploring the stories of ‘new materialism’, which (to quote Hannes Bergthaller, writing on Limits of Agency) “dissolves the singular figure … into the dense web of material relations.” Skilfully, he both beguiled and shocked his audience in this exploration of a new and uncharted territory and discipline, leaving us with the remark that ‘new nature writing’ “offers a refuge from modernity and the narrow social space.”

Wild conversations

Jonathan Skinner, an American poet, ecocritic and academic at Warwick University, sought to find a middle way in his ‘poetics of the third landscape’: a gentle meander into and out of the edgelands. To those of us that walk them, these liminal spaces suggest exciting possibilities and subtleties. His description of the “intelligence of the weedy, where lifeforms, rhizomes or rooting plants exist for co-created futures” resonated with me. And his introduction of the phrase ‘entropology’ brought to mind a recent exploration of the Blackwater estuary in Essex where, alongside the decommissioned nuclear power plant, I discovered the old electricity generating station, now completely overcome with wild nature, trees and scrub of all description topping out above the metal and phantasmagoric shapes.

Richard Kerridge
Photograph: Pippa Lacey © 2018

These three presentations in the morning set the scene for the day. Following on, artist Iain Biggs explored ecopoetics and art as ‘wild conversation’ through his work in deep mapping, and in explorations of the artist as “first and foremost, a deep listener”. This melted beautifully into writer Elizabeth-Jane Burnett’s sharing of some of her projects, taking us into deep elemental knowledge, in Swims (2017) — poetry inspired by and written during wild swimming — and The Grassling (2019), a deep mapping memoir of three Devon fields that she and her family are connected with.

Her work — and then the subsequent session with readings from the featured writers — came as a refreshing tide of words that uplifted and delighted the audience. Down with the seals in the depths of the estuary flow, amongst the eco-poetics embodied in this day in Kings Lynn, in the deep county of Norfolk.

Find out more

James Murray-White is GroundWork Gallery’s filmmaker in residence and you can see some of his films of artists at the gallery on their People page.

GroundWork Gallery in King’s Lynn shows the work of contemporary artists who care about how we see the world. The gallery’s exhibitions and creative programmes explore how art can enable us to respond to the changing environment and imagine how we can shape its future.

Jonathan Skinner — one of the speakers at the event — has a short piece on What is Ecopoetry? at ecopoetry.org

The event was organised with the British Ecological Society. The Society and Norfolk Wildlife Trust also sponsored Regarding Nature, GroundWork Gallery’s photographic exhibition (23rd June – 16th September 2018). “Regarding Nature is an exhibition which tells some big stories about landscape. Through the eyes of French photographer Chrystel Lebas and her scientist predecessors in the early 20th century, it focusses on the plants and landscapes of the North Norfolk coast.”

James Murray-White

A writer and filmmaker linking art forms to dialogue around climate issues, whose practice stretches back to theatre-making.
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Susan Holliday

A psychotherapist and writer committed to the rewilding of human nature, exploring the correlation between despoiling our natural world and the desolation of the human spirit
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Walking the Winds: Mistral

Writer Nick Hunt walked the invisible pathways of Europe’s named winds for Where the Wild Winds Are. His final extract tracks France’s Mistral (‘masterly’, from the Latin magistralis), the ‘idiot wind’ that inspired and tormented Vincent Van Gogh.

810 words: estimated reading time 3 minutes

‘There is a town north-west of here called Aubenas, deeper in Ardèche. The old people say that until fifteen years ago, they had never known Mistral. Now it blows there frequently, very strong, only in the last two decades. No one knows why.’

This was not the first time I’d heard of winds changing their patterns – in Croatia people had argued incessantly over whether the Bora was stronger or weaker than before – but it was a topic I had mostly steered clear of. The dizzying complexity of meteorological science had been impressed on me early on, and statements like ‘the winds are changing’ are impossible to back up without meticulous data and computer modelling. Anecdotal evidence is equally dodgy territory, because people’s memories of what the wind was like fifty years ago, or twenty, or two, relies on their subjective state, which can change as dramatically as the winds they are trying to remember. As every poet knows, the boundary between weather and mood is infinitely porous.

However, it seems clear enough that if Europe’s climate is changing, the time-worn pathways of its winds eventually will too. If the climate changes the temperature changes, which means the atmospheric pressure changes; if the atmospheric pressure changes air will be forced along different routes, adapting to environmental shifts as species do. In fifty or a hundred years perhaps the Mistral will have migrated to the east or west, rendering those blank north-facing walls obsolete technology. Perhaps the Helm will be displaced from its redoubt on Cross Fell – the demons finally exorcised for good – and the Bora, Foehn, Tramontana and Bise channelled into different territories, like climate refugees.

The clear light of the Mistral in the Plain of the Crau, southern France. Photograph by Nick Hunt — The clear light of the Mistral in the Plain of the Crau, southern France.
Photograph: Nick Hunt © 2017
http://www.nickhuntscrutiny.com

Viviers, it turned out, was a fitting place for such thoughts: a local legend warns of the perils of the winds changing their patterns. According to this origin myth the Mistral rises not far from here, in an area of marsh, pouring through the open mouth of an enormous cave. After years of suffering, the people living in its path devised a method of stifling it; they constructed a great wooden door, reinforced with iron bands, and nailed it swiftly into place to take the wind by surprise. The Masterly howled its discontent, cursing and threatening, but was trapped inside the rock with no hope of escape.

That winter was the mildest the Rhône Valley had ever known, untroubled by frost or snow, and the people were glad of what they’d done. When summer came, however, everything started to go wrong. The air was humid and unhealthy, causing sickness and disease. With no wind to dry the fields the grass grew lank, the ground became boggy and the crops developed mould; the countryside sweltered, and was plagued by insects. Unable to bear these conditions any longer the people decided to free the wind, nominating the nearest village to prise open the door. Before they did so, the locals made the Mistral promise to behave more gently, to stop flattening their crops and tearing down their barns. The Mistral kept its word, but – like any deal with the devil –- acted to the letter rather than the spirit of the pact, sparing the immediate environs but not the countryside beyond; once released it howled to the south, frustrated from its captivity, and raged with a violence even greater than before. The moral of this environmental fable is very clear: don’t mess with forces you don’t understand. The cold north wind, for all its discomfort, brings blessings to the land.

***

Nick introduced this five-part series with an extract of the book’s opening essay, following this with his account of walking with England’s wild wind, the Helm. In the third part he shared his experience of the Bora, walking the Adriatic coast from north-east Italy through Slovenia and Croatia, and in part four he went in pursuit of Switzerland’s ‘snow-eating’ Foehn.

Find out more

Where the Wild Winds Are is published by Nicholas Brealey. Nick works as an editor for the Dark Mountain Project.

Nick Hunt

A fiction and non-fiction writer and editor for the Dark Mountain network of writers, artists and thinkers who've stopped believing the stories our civilisation tells itself.
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Questioning boundaries? Space for creative thinking... 

"Nick ends his series of excerpts with thoughts about changes in Europe's winds - and the 'infinitely porous' boundary between weather and mood. How might we construct maps of a future Europe illustrated not by our natural or political boundaries changing with its climate but by the altered moods of its peoples and places'?" 

Share your thoughts - use the Contact Form or write a response on your own blog and send a link!

Walking the Winds: Foehn

Writer Nick Hunt walked the invisible pathways of Europe’s named winds for Where the Wild Winds Are. Here he pursues Switzerland’s ‘snow-eating’ Foehn, which brings clear skies and wildfires — as well as insomnia, nosebleeds, anxiety and depression.

580 words: estimated reading time 2.5 minutes

Stepping outside was like being plunged into a warm, stormy sea. Channelled, diverted and rebuffed by the complexities of the slopes, the Foehn’s southerly flow was confused, broken into conflicting currents that rushed nervously against one another, so that one moment I was standing still and the next propelled alarmingly forward at speeds I could hardly control. The cable car was grounded, its gantry and trembling wires caught in one unending scream; the only alternative route was the three-hour trail down the mountain. The forest was a static roar, and the pines bent like rubber with the impact of each gust. When the world emerged below, it looked as if layers had been removed to reveal it for the first time.

A Foehn-clear day in Altdorf, Switzerland. Photograph by Nick Hunt — A Foehn-clear day in Altdorf, Switzerland.
Photograph: Nick Hunt © 2017
http://www.nickhuntscrutiny.com/

The surrounding mountains had jumped closer, dabbed with Tippex-white snow, each crease and ripple illuminated to a hyperreal degree. The rooftops of Altdorf were so defined it was like looking through a telescope: every chimney, turret and tile had been tuned to perfect focus, giving everything an oddly computer-generated quality. Descending to the windswept town was like turning a dial and zooming in, the picture growing more precise with each step.

Loud with sunshine, bright with wind, Altdorf was a different town from the rain-streaked place I had left. The temperature had leapt ten degrees and warm air coursed the streets, flapping the shirtsleeves of gossiping elders, hurling the water from orderly fountains and driving tornadoes of leaves through the lanes. The keys, crowns and pretzels of ironwork shop-signs swung madly over doorways, and woodcock feathers vibrated in the brims of Alpine hats.

There was only one direction: blossom, leaves, litter, dust and plastic bags all chased north, and the clothes on washing lines had turned to weather vanes. I followed this flurried migration back to Flüelen and the lake, where the water had turned an unreal blue, flecked with magnesium flares. A steady procession of white horses roared offshore in repetitive ranks, divisions of cavalry on the move; on the quayside an elderly man sat watching the waves, wind-bathing.

The energy overwhelmed my senses, made me drunk with it. With the Foehn’s encouraging hand at my back I fairly flew along the trail, under the Ober Axen cliffs, through a tunnel in the rock where the air was funnelled so intensely it forced me into a clumsy jog, and soon I was back beside the lakeside chapel at Tellsplatte. Soon after that the black bull of Uri was replaced by a white cross on red: I had entered the canton of Schwyz, which gave Switzerland – Schwyzerland – its flag, and its name.

***

Nick introduced this five-part series with an extract of the book’s opening essay, following this with his account of walking with England’s wild wind, the Helm and his experience of the Bora, walking the Adriatic coast from north-east Italy through Slovenia and Croatia. In our final extract, Nick shares his experience on the trail of the ‘idiot wind’ – France’s Mistral.

Find out more

Where the Wild Winds Are is published by Nicholas Brealey. Nick works as an editor for the Dark Mountain Project.

Nick Hunt

A fiction and non-fiction writer and editor for the Dark Mountain network of writers, artists and thinkers who've stopped believing the stories our civilisation tells itself.
Read More

Walking the Winds: Bora

Writer Nick Hunt walked the invisible pathways of Europe’s named winds for Where the Wild Winds Are. In his third extract, Nick follows the freezing Bora –named for Boreas, the ice-bearded Greek god of the north wind.

510 words: estimated reading time 2 minutes

Gornje Sitno was the highest village, the end of the road. Six inches of powder snow squeaked under my boots as I climbed, snowballing at the tips of the laces, making lion’s tails. The snow had favoured the windward side of every leaf and blade of grass, while tree trunks and telephone poles were vertically scored with a furred white line angled precisely northeast, as if magnetised to a new pole. The world had been perfectly bisected, divided between spring and winter.

The Bora on Mount Mosor, Croatia. Photograph by Nick Hunt — The Bora on Mount Mosor, Croatia
Photograph: Nick Hunt © 2017
www.nickhuntscrutiny.com

Sheltered by the slope at first, I could only hear it. But then I reached the top, and the Bora was upon me.

It was on my skin, freezing my face, blizzarding into my eyes. My eyelashes were frosted, my beard stiff with ice. I made the mistake of removing my mittens and my fingers throbbed so much it felt as if they’d been slammed in a door. The chill of it pushed me back, forced me to proceed in a crouch, as if advancing under fire. Or as if I was bowing.

It was in my ears, but it wasn’t blowing; nor was it moaning, whistling, howling, or any of the other words usually used to capture wind. It was less a sound than a sensation, a nameless energetic thing that erased the line between hearing and feeling; for the first time in my life, I understood sound as a physical force. It was in my lungs, under my skin. Like a religious maniac, I roared my appreciation.

The Bora roared right back at me, and the mountainside ignited. An eighty-mile-per-hour blast lifted veils of powder snow, frozen spindrift that swirled like smoke, spinning itself into ice tornadoes that leapt from slope to slope before blowing apart again in mists of agitated dust. It happened again and again as I watched, each white eruption spreading and merging to create gyrating clouds that travelled as fast as a forest fire, hurtling down the mountain. The Bora’s face was visible in each fleeting pattern of snow, each convolution and curlicue, each vortex, twist and coil. I saw the invisible appear, the formless given form.

What did the Bora say to me, on that frozen mountainside?

I could not read its words. Its language was too large.

***

Nick introduced this five-part series with an extract of the book’s opening essay and, in his second extract, tracked northern England’s Helm wind. In his next post, Nick shares his experience of the ‘snow-eating’ Foehn of Switzerland, bringer of wildfires and insomnia and clear skies.

Find out more

Where the Wild Winds Are is published by Nicholas Brealey. Nick works as an editor for the Dark Mountain Project.

Nick Hunt

A fiction and non-fiction writer and editor for the Dark Mountain network of writers, artists and thinkers who've stopped believing the stories our civilisation tells itself.
Read More

Walking the Winds: Helm

Writer Nick Hunt walked the invisible pathways of Europe’s named winds for Where the Wild Winds Are. Here, he’s on the trail of the Helm, which blows from desolate Cross Fell to wreak havoc in the Eden Valley.

680 words: estimated reading time 2.5 minutes

The view resembled a different country to the one I’d seen the morning before. There was no sodden cloud, no murk; the land was bright and loud again, the weather vane of the topmost pines twitching to the west. I made coffee in a pan, cowboy style — a mouthful of grits and a mule-kick to the heart — and as I was thinking of going out, the door banged open.

It was a cheerful pink woman who had hiked up from Kirkland. ‘You can hear the Helm up there,’ she announced breathlessly. ‘It’s horrible, howling and moaning and groaning. I was too scared to go up.’ I was already pulling on my boots, fumbling with the laces. ‘You know why it’s called Cross Fell?’ she continued, taking out her sandwiches. ‘It used to be called Fiends Fell. People thought that demons lived there, so they sent a holy man to bless it. He exorcised the evil spirits, built a cross to drive them away. But I don’t think it worked. It still sounds like it’s cursed.’ I was halfway through the door. I didn’t want to miss them.

The Helm Bar, over Cross Fell. Photograph by Nick Hunt — The Helm Bar, over Cross Fell
Photograph: Nick Hunt © 2017
http://nickhuntscrutiny.com/

It certainly looked like the home of fiends, despite the bright sunshine. Dramatic events were occurring above, in the fathomless workings of the clouds; it seemed that opposing weather systems were engaged in epic warfare. To the north and west a ragged mass scoured the lower slopes of the fell – Grey Scar, Black Doors, Man at Edge, said the place-names on my map — hazing the air with a smudge of rain, leaving shreds of itself behind. Autonomous mists of water vapour travelled in long vertical trails high above the Eden Valley, and grandiose crepuscular rays poured down on the mountains of the Northern Lakes, where Ullswater distantly shone as bright as a mirror. The Helm Bar was not in place, but developments were moving so rapidly it seemed that anything might happen. Scattering Swaledale ewes I hurried on the Pennine Way, up the long, deceptive rise that led towards the summit.

Who was this mysterious holy man? I wondered as I climbed. Unsurprisingly, research suggests that no one really knows; some say a bishop, some say a saint, some say a wandering monk. A local clergyman, the Reverend Robinson of Ousby, wrote in 1709 of the

evil Spirits which are said in former Times to have haunted the Top of this Mountain; and continued their Haunts and Nocturnal Vagaries upon it, until St. Austin, as is said, erected a Cross and built an Altar upon it, whereon he offered the Holy Eucharist, by which he countercharm’d those Hellish Fiends, and broke their Haunts. Since that time it has had the Name of Cross-Fell, and to this day there is a heap of stones which goes by the name of the Altar upon Cross-Fell.

What had the woman from Kirkland meant, talking about howling and moaning? Alone in that empty place I soon found out. Something must have shifted in the air, for the aural landscape suddenly changed: above the buffeting blows of gusts that banged recurrently on my ears, flatlining like microphone distortion, rose an unearthly whispering like dozens of tiny voices. It was a mischievous chattering accompanied by a hissing that suggested branches and spirals, complex patterns being woven in the air, and under it all a low moan, like an animal in distress.

***

Nick introduced this five-part series with an extract of the book’s opening essay, and in the third part he shares his experience of the Bora, walking the Adriatic coast from north-east Italy through Slovenia and Croatia.

Find out more

Where the Wild Winds Are is published by Nicholas Brealey. Nick works as an editor for the Dark Mountain Project.

Nick Hunt

A fiction and non-fiction writer and editor for the Dark Mountain network of writers, artists and thinkers who've stopped believing the stories our civilisation tells itself.
Read More