Values of Environmental Writing

Glasgow University is undertaking an interesting research project exploring the relationship between reading habits and pro-environmental behaviour. Looking at what is referred to as 'Creative Environmental Writing', the project raises a lot of interesting questions about the role and responsibility of writers in challenging times, how easy it is to 'track' reading choices and attitudes, and the relationship between language and the world.

Although there is a limit on the numbers involved in face to face meetings, they are keen to engage a wider group of people through an on-line forum, which can be found on the website along with other accompanying papers used to stimulate discussion. The Dark Mountain manifesto in particular stimulated some spirited discussion!

The Black Isle in words

I've just spent a delightful weekend at the 10th Black Isle Words Festival in Cromarty, an 18th century sea port. It's the third time I've been lucky enough to attend as part of the programme and it delivered its usual intimate sharing of words and ideas, with the stimulus of quality literature in a jewel-like setting on the Moray Firth.

This year, the theme was 'where the wild things are ', and the significance of place to many writers was explored as well as the process of connecting to nature, wilderness, and wildness through words and writing. The event drew in speakers of international renown such as Jay Griffiths and John Lister-Kaye, but also ensured a place for local writers who have captured the Black Isle in words or been captivated by it. The legacy of Hugh Miller still runs deep through stories, geological discoveries, and even some of the carvings he made on Cromarty gravestones. His links to this place are beautifully brought to life in a short piece of writing by Ali Smith which you will find here.

On the Saturday I led a walking workshop with poet and wildlife photographer Gerry Cambridge. It was a relaxed ramble around places and ideas using our senses and imagination, but the undoubted highlight was our visit to the Gaelic chapel which sits on a knoll above the village. Built for incomers brought to work in various industries during a prosperous period of Cromarty's history in the late 18th century, it is now being reclaimed by nature, its roof a lattice of living branches building a vault into the sky, its floor crackling with ivy. It held us there in silent exploration and then in discussion for many minutes, evoking thoughts about the trees that make up the Gaelic alphabet, sacred groves, hidden roots, and much more.

It's not the only interesting church in Cromarty. The festival events on the Saturday afternoon, were held in the beautiful pre-reformation East Church which is currently under restoration. The writer Jane Duncan, for whom the Black Isle was home and subject, was the focus. Mairi Hedderwick gave a fascinating account, through her archive of publisher's letters, of her early career as an illustrator of Jane Duncan's children's books. Letters full of care and tact, which maintained distance between writer and illustrator. It would be hard to imagine there being time for such letters to be written now. Dr Fiona Thompson of Leeds University reflected on the importance of place in Jane Duncan's novels, her character and life through her diary and letters.

There was time as well to walk , to smell the sea, scan the skyline for dolphins, sniff history and mystery in tunnels and crypts, the lighthouse and seashore which have witnessed the passing of so many emigrant ships. There's another fascinating small graveyard sheltering within a copse of trees beyond the village, above the sea. Known as the 'Pirate's graveyard' because many of the stones are ornately carved with skulls and crossbones, it was outside the village because the graves were for victims of TB. The gravestones lie supine now, scattered with leaves, polished up by rain and by thin sunlight strained through leaves.

Sunday's programme proved fascinating too. Sharon Blackie of Two Ravens Press (publisher of ' a Wilder Vein ') spoke about the principles underlying her writing, publishing and lifestyle, which she has recently relocated to the far west coast of the Isle of Lewis. John Lister-Kaye reflected on taking 30 years to 'know' the mile walk around his home near Beauly where he founded the Aigas field centre as documented in his new book 'At the water's edge '. There were weasel cathedral within a dry stone wall, poignant events of childhood evoked though a smell, and an interesting account of the 'genre ' of nature writing which had me wondering, once again, where the women writers are. And then Jay Griffiths gave a passionate and lyrical introduction to her 'Wild ', which she feels as the state of the human soul, not just as an idea of land or remoteness or what we think of as savage.

As I pedalled furiously against a headwind to get to my train in Inverness my mind sang with thoughts, ideas, words and reflections. A weekend of great company in an intriguing place where everyone is a participant with words. Exactly what a good book festival should be.

Nature writing, mist-filled valleys and chocolate

What a great morning. Sunrise as I crackled through frosted grasses above the mist. A steaming mocha with whipped cream on top. Then home to find that The Independent have today recommended A Wilder Vein as a Christmas read in their nature-writing round up. (Some other great recommendations there too). Hurrah!

A Wilder Vein back from the printers

What a delight it has been to receive the anthology that I've edited hot of the press from Two Ravens Press. Although publication date is 2nd November, it's for sale before then from their website ONLY at the great price of £8.99, for delivery from 1st October. This not only gives the reader a good deal, but is good news for this small press who are severely challenged by the commercial discounts required by many booksellers.

This is a quality book - looks good, feels gorgeous and packed with diverse and beautifully written responses to the wild places of Britain and Ireland. It includes the extended version of Palestinian writer Raja Shehadeh's piece, pre-published in The Guardian in July. It's very gratifying to see so much work by so many going out to make its way in the book world. Please help it on its way!

Launch events at The Aberfeldy Watermill, Tuesday 27th October with Andrew Greig, Mandy Haggith, Alison Grant and Kenny Taylor; and as part of the Edinburgh Radical Book Fair on Thursday 29th October with readings by Judith Thurley, Ken Wilkie, Andrew Greig and Jane Alexander.

Jessie Kesson's nature writings

One thousand feet up on the hillside at Abriachan where the winds sing over the brow of the steep western slopes of Loch Ness, a dormer-windowed house straddles lush pasture land and the scratch of heather on the open moor above. This is Achbuie, where at the age of nineteen, prolific writer Jessie Kesson (1916-1994) went to rehabilitate after a ‘lost year’ of virtual imprisonment in a mental hospital. She was ‘boarded out’, as the practice was known, living with and helping an elderly woman on her croft. The experience of Spring here flushed her into an ecstatic appreciation of nature, and spelt out for her recovery, re-growth and a sense of freedom. Amongst the smell of bracken-mould and primroses, on a hill so high up that ‘you feel any moment you might topple into Loch Ness below’, she walked ‘without limits of walls’.

When I set off to explore Kesson’s terrain in 2008 for my own essay for Doubling Back, I wanted to draw more than a glimpse of her hillside. I wanted to share her exuberance and find the Red Rock she wrote about. I ‘found’ Jessie’s hillside, in the sense that my own rambles seemed to correspond with the joyful arrangements of her own words evoking Spring here, and because I took the sunny green slopes below Achbuie rather than the bleak moor bristling above.

I sought out her other writing, read more of the fictionalised re-workings of her own traumatic childhood years. The dull bass beat of pain was always there, but somehow overlain with bright, poetic joys found in nature or brief moments of love and belonging.

I've written before here about Jessie Kesson's life and writing of this time and place, which bubbled up in much of her later work, including the twelve essays she wrote as 'Ness MacDonald' for the Scots magazine during 1946, entitled 'The Country Dweller's Year'. Last year I had to go to the National Library of Scotland in order to read them, but I'm delighted that these essays and various other pieces of her writing - essays, drama for radio, poetry, fiction - in response to nature during her early writing career, have recently been collected by her biographer Isobel Murray and issued by Kennedy and Boyd. As Murray says they demsonstrate 'a passionate response to the natural world' in a style of writing that is lyrical even in prose, and yet earthy and direct as if the language itself is inflected by place, smell, and song.

John Muir Trust and wild writing

Last Wednesday myself and co-judge Hamish MacDonald announced the winners of the John Muir Trust's wild writing competition at Fort William's fantastic Mountain Festival. It's the third year I've been involved in some capacity and the way that JMT has joined the Festival in developing a creative response to mountains and wild places in our lives has been fantastic and creates more and more interest each year.

For the full results, see here but Tom Bryan of Kelso was the overall winner with a beautiful reflection on his relationship with Suilven, the iconic Assynt mountain that follows one's eye, shape-shifting as it goes, around that part of north-west Scotland. Alan Gay of North Berwick took second place with a mysterious poem called 'Deer Path' which for me made the visible and invisible worlds of the mountains touch for a moment. There were three runners up - all prose pieces - from Kate Blackadder, Stephen Busby and Jenny Holden.

Joyce Carol Oates criticised 'nature writing' for what she called its "painfully limited set of responses: reverence, awe, piety, mystical oneness." We may have found those responses amongst the entries but we also found exhilaration, confusion, boredom, coldness, joy and grief.

Congratulations to all!

Meanwhile, if you get hold of a copy of the latest JMT journal (46/Spring 2009) you will find an illustrated extract of my piece 'The Beat of Heart Stones' about a walk along a dry stone dyke on Schiehallion this time last year.

Call for submissions: Two Ravens Press anthology of 'wild places' non-fiction

In November 2009 Two Ravens Press will publish an anthology of literary non-fiction that focuses on the relationship between people and the wild places of the British Isles. We are looking for high quality writing which animates a connection between humanity and the natural world where it is not obviously dominated by the human presence. It might articulate a discovery; a new way of seeing; an emotional response; a meditation on a place or who we are as people in a wild world.

The anthology will have a foreword by Robert Macfarlane (The Wild Places, Mountains of the Mind) and be edited by Linda Cracknell who is a writer of short fiction (collections: Life Drawing, The Searching Glance) and who received a Creative Scotland Award in 2007 for a collection of non-fiction essays in response to walks (see http://walkingandwriting.blogspot.com/).

There are no restrictions on the nationality/residency of contributors to the anthology. Previously unpublished non-fiction prose only; no fiction or poetry will be considered. Upper word limit: 8000 words. Contributions will be accepted by email only, and should be sent as a Microsoft Word attachment to info@tworavenspress.com. Please include with your submission a paragraph about your previous writing experience and publication history. The deadline for submissions is March 31 2009. Royalties from the book will be split equally between all contributors.

The New Nature Writing

Granta Magazine's issue 102 is dedicated to nature writing and makes a case for a shift - towards narratives, towards the presence of humans, the presence of the writer in the story.

There's certainly some wonderful writing in there. Kathleen Jamie's 'it's not all primroses and dolphins' nature-essay looks at the human body and its sick cells under a microscope and finds vast landscapes. Paul Farley and Niall Griffiths return to the estate on the edge of Liverpool where they both grew up, go on a sort of ghost-walk through memory, chart change and edge into what are the white pages in the A-Z - the almost rural, almost urban - where they went nesting. Having just spent a lot of time with Barry Hines' 1968 novel, 'Kestrel For Knave', for a BBC abridgment, this gave me a particular tug - that urban/rural borderland was the one solace in the lad, Billy Casper's life, and was powerfully evoked in this piece. There's Robert Macfarlane tracing a human ghost species in Norfolk; a wonderful short story by a woman called Lydia Peele I've never heard of; and Philip Marsden uncovers the life of a little known Victorian artist and archaeologist, J. T. Blight who stomped around recording things in the haunting landscape and chamber tombs of West Penwith until sent to an asylum at the age of 35.

It's a very rich collection. But two things make me uneasy. Firstly, where are the women? Two out of eighteen. Where are Valerie Gillies and Jay Griffiths? The broad and inclusive notion of nature writing that contributors have offered surely would embrace many more women writers, especially if fiction is to be included. There seems something oddly old-fashioned and anachronistic in this idea of the nature-writer as man.

But this brings me to my other uneasiness. In what sense is this 'nature writing' anyway? Isn't it just 'writing' that might appear in anthologies of work collected in the name of half a dozen different themes? At the Edinburgh Book Festival event in support of the publication, the contributors present were keen to point out that they saw their writing more as reflecting a new perception of the place of nature in our lives, and ourselves as nature. I would hesitate to call what I do by this name, although nature, and a keen observation of it, is often part of it. Perhaps I'm just not happy with narrow attempts at definition, feel it as a kind of boxing-in.

But a recommended read, nonetheless.