Launch Event

Podcast on Writing about Nature and Environment launched today

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I’ve been working with Paperboats Writers and Station House Media Unit (SHMU) on a new monthly podcast launched officially today!

If you’re not familiar with Paperboats Writers, they’re a fantastic group of writers working across Scotland (and beyond) to highlight the impacts of climate change, the ecological collapse we’re all witness to, and the things we can do to help bring about positive change.

In each episode I meet with a different writer from the Paperboats collective. We discuss their work, and the issues they write about.

In Ep.1 I talk with Paperboats co-founders, author Sandy Winterbottom and Scots writer and poet Elaine Morrison.

We hear Scotland’s Makar Kathleen Jamie (National Poet for Scotland 2021 – 2024) read her inspirational poem ‘What the Clyde Said, After Cop 26’, discuss the formation of Paperboats Writers, the importance of a Just Transition, and the work of Global Justice Now and the Scottish Rewilding Alliance.

In upcoming episodes I’ll be talking with author Linda Cracknell about the Flow Country and her book Doubling Back, and with Nature Writer and photographer Polly Pullar about the plight of the gannet and Polly’s life-long relationship with wildlife.

Many more fantastic Nature Writers to feature in the coming months, so I hope you’ll give it a listen, and follow and subscribe to keep up with future episodes.

Available on Spotify, Amazon, Apple and YouTube.

Stravaig 13 Reading

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“Staying still, I close my eyes and listen. I am filled by the moor’s presence: the sound of the burn at the side of the road; the faint calls of birds, unseen in the heather; the icy cold breath of the wind on my neck. A deep sense of peace comes to me. I feel held within the moor’s ever-changing, ever-present elements, its blossoming and its constant renewal: just one of countless life-processes.”

Ian Grosz, from ‘The Moor, the Sea, the Sky’, Sravaig 13, pp.30-33, p.33.

I’m looking forward to reading from my short essay ‘The Moor, the Sea, the Sky’ this evening, published in Stravaig 13 in the summer. Stravaig is the journal of the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics which draws on the writings and philosophy of Kenneth White to bring together a diverse range of writers, artists, academics, ecologists and earth scientists to explore how Geopoetics can be applied to our lives and our approach to the Earth as home.

My essay explores Lewis’s moorland landscape and my place within it on a return visit to the Western Isles in 2022 after an absence of fifteen years. It is a much-abridged extract of a chapter from a book-length work of narrative non-fiction exploring how landscapes shape a sense of place and identity, for which I am now seeking a publisher. I’ll be reading a short extract from the essay alongside the other contributors of this special Islands issue of the journal.

Click here for a link to join the event and on the image above to read Stravaig 13.

A Day for Nature

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I was delighted to be a part of the Paperboats e-zine 2 launch which featured in the University of Stirling’s symposium ‘A Day for Nature’, organised by poet and Teaching Fellow Dr Chris Powici to celebrate, and advocate for, the natural world.

The event featured a panel of speakers including conservationists and Nature Writers Polly Puller and Tom Bowser of the Argaty Red Kites project, broadcaster and author Rebecca Smith, historian Dr Catherine Mills, and vice president of the university student Earth and Environment Society Ivet Stancheva. Each of the panelists gave fascinating talks about changes in the landscape over time from their different perspectives with a Q+A.

The Paperboats E-Zine is edited by Chris Powici and Kathleen Jamie and features work by writers from across Scotland and beyond concerned about our mounting ecological crises. The paperboats name and its inclusive, non-disruptive activism, has been inspired by Jamie’s poem written as Scottish Makar in response to the commitments of COP26, where, in the final verse, the poet speaks as the river Clyde.

“I heard the beautiful promises…
and, sure, I’m a river,
but I can take a side.
From this day, I’d rather keep afloat,
like wee folded paper boats,
the hopes of the young folk
chanting at my bank,
fear in their spring-bright eyes
so hear this:
          fail them, and I will rise.”

You can read the full poem here.

Despite the promises made, our politicians are failing us, and Paperboats aims to send a message on Thursday 23rd November 2023 by gathering outside the Scottish Parliament to deliver 1000 Paperboats, 1000 Climate Hopes, to demand that MSPs of all parties come together to deliver on their promises and a just transition to green energy.

The event will feature poetry from Kathleen Jamie and music from Karine Polwart.

To read the Paperboats E-Zine, go to Paperboats Writings.

Four Rivers, Deep Maps UK Launch

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After being published through UWAP in September 2022 and launched initially in Perth, WA, Four Rivers, Deep Maps comes to the UK with a launch event at the University of Aberdeen on Thursday 15th June in the Sir Duncan Rice Library. Click on the image above for details.

The cities – Perth, Australia, and Aberdeen, Scotland – have received relatively little attention as specific geographical–cultural locales. Often perceived as industrial, isolated and lacking romantic association, they nevertheless have rich historical, narrative and creative traditions that characterise interactions between humans and place, particularly along the length of the four rivers.

My own contribution charts the River Don from source to sea, uncovering its ancient sacred associations and exploring how they have shaped the geography and identity of the region through time.

All the contributions of this book are woven together through strands of deep mapping and ideas of place, history and inhabitation. Countercultures seem to return to specific place knowledge that predates industrialisation, whether in the traditional shapes of the Nyoongar knowledge of the Derbarl Yarrigan (Swan River) and Beeliar (Canning River) or the traditions and ancient patterns of Aberdeenshire: we come back to these profound knowledge systems that, in fact, never went away.

Copies of Four Rivers, Deep Maps are in stock at Blackwells and will be available to purchase on the night.

Four Rivers: Deep Maps Launch Event

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There will be an official in-person launch event for Four Rivers: Deep Maps, held in Perth, Western Australia on Nov. 4th at 6-8pm AWST. And if you can’t manage to be in Australia by then, there will be a second event, planned for the UK in the first half of 2023. Dates to be confirmed.

For more information on the book project, click here. And to register FREE for the in-person Perth event, click on the image above.