By Mary Woodbury

This month we travel to the world of Botswana author Tlotlo Tsamaase, whose short story “Eclipse Our Sins” rocked me in a good way. You can read it at Clarkesworld. I featured this story in my last article at Medium, Part II of my Around the World in 80 Books series, which examines climate- and ecological-themed fiction from everywhere. I was so happy to finally touch base with Tlotlo and talk about “Eclipse” as well as her other writing and work. “Eclipse Our Sins” cries out against the grotesque evolution of our world and how nature has been suffocated in the hands of takers and users. It’s a brilliant, riveting prose-like story in which stark imagery comes alive, painting a crime-ridden place where evil-doings against natural landscape and culture go hand in hand.

CHAT WITH THE AUTHOR

Your writing includes fiction (mostly speculative or horror), poetry, and architectural articles. I attended an Ecocity summit in Vancouver, British Columbia, so I was drawn to that architectural aspect of your work and would love it if you could talk some about eco-cities.

I’m going to outright quote an article I wrote some years back for Boidus Focus, a local built-environment newspaper, which is a bit relevant to this question: “Eco-cities illustrate the scramble to reinvent cities in juxtaposition to their sibling-cities with a core focus on sustainability. Eco-cities are synonymous to built-from-scratch, self-reliant satellite cities that maintain an eco-friendly environment from which everyone can lead healthy and economic lifestyles. Ultimately, this would mitigate the congestion in urban areas. As such, there is the escalating environmental concern regarding global population, which is estimated to reach around 10 billion in 2050 from its current 7-billion state. On a larger scale, eco-cities have been experimented with, like Masdar City in Abu Dhabi, PlanIT Valley in Portugal, Tianjin Eco-city in China, Amanora Hills in India, etc. Other African eco-cities are Konza Techno City in Nairobi (claimed as Africa’s Silicon Valley), Appolonia in Ghana, Roma Park in Zambia and Angola’s ghost town Luanda is Nova Cidade de Kilamba, amongst a few.”

The unfortunate thing is that sometimes these big ideas are hemmed in by corruption and an abandonment of the very sustainable ideas a country is trying to uphold. This keeps out the necessary professionals or even the issues on the ground – like poverty – and ultimately the eco-city either becomes a ghost town or less sustainable than it set out to be.

Can you describe what gives impulse to your fiction and poetry?

Firstly, writing comes from a place of passion. And most often it’s a need to process issues in our world – racism, climate change, gender-based violence, culture, technology etc. – in a way that is consumable to a reader through plot and characterization. But the interesting thing is manipulating our reality by exploring an alternative world and its ideas. Writing is also a blank page to paint your pain across, a very cathartic experience depending on the topic and themes. The beauty of writing allows one to read from different perspectives and see how the other side of the world lives or dreams. These, I believe, give me ideas that trigger me to start writing.

When I researched for a recent article at Medium, which goes around the world exploring eco-fiction, I walked away with great discoveries, which is how I found your story “Eclipse Our Sins.” The article spotlights 10-12 pieces of fiction from every continent. Trying to sample the continent of Africa is interesting, as works are so diverse. Some of the common themes I’ve seen include colonialism, the spiritual world, and speculative fiction such as Africanfuturism. Where do you write from, and how do place and environment inform your writing?

I write from many places. The thing about speculative fiction is you can bend reality and create an entirely different universe by either extrapolating our current-day issues or turning them on their head and seeing how that affects a family, a character, or even a village. Basically, I try to analyze the micro and macro parts of our world, whilst dissecting emotions through the lens of climate change. In one way, a writer can create a utopian universe, freeing its characters from the oppressive conflicts of our current reality, although conflict always rises. In another way, writers can process the dark side of our world. â€œMurders Fell From Our Wombs” comes to mind, a horror that explores gender-based violence in a murderous village. One tries to analyze the psychology of abuse, racism, and its effect on the person, the community.

My first year studying architecture was such a culture shock; we didn’t know what it took to turn buildings into reality. What it takes to root architecture to a place is the environment, the land, the people, the culture. A building either ignores these elements or embraces them. We’d go out to a site to analyze and document the culture of the area as well as the natural environment, such as topography, wind and rain, soil details, the patterns of people’s movements, their daily activities, local materials, culture, and rituals. If we didn’t respond in any way to this analysis, our lecturers called our designs “floating designs;” they could literally be put anywhere in the world and you wouldn’t be able to tell where they came from or who they were for. Our designs – as I try with my writing – had to be rooted to place, one way or another. If we ignored the place, it had to be for a good reason.

I try to explore that in some of my writing because that is how I was taught to process ideas and develop them. You have to ask yourself, what is this place where the character lives? What is their background, their motive, and their conflict? What issues exist that prevent them from reaching their goal? How did they grow up, what are their culture and rituals like? What would happen if you fused the traditional element of this place with technology? What would become of it and the people, and would it change them for the better or for worse? A person’s belief system also influences how they behave. You have to understand a character’s belief system, and most often it is tied to the land, the plants, the trees, etc. Also, nature is free. For example, a passive-designed building can use its environment for cooling (reducing heating and cooling costs). It can use deciduous trees to block the summer sun and let in the winter sun, or to redirect winds, etc. I could see nature as either a passive or active character in a story. Earth as a character that we abuse or love, which inspired the story “Eclipse Our Sins.”

Can you explain more what “Eclipse Our Sins” is doing and what motivated you to write it?

It was an amalgamation of many things: climate change, crimes, fear, pain. It came from a suffocating pressure-cooker moment of being inundated with scorching news reports of police shootings of Black men, gender-based violence, Black women being murdered horrendously, pollution, deforestation, toxic buildings we throw people into because of budget cuts, corruption, the raping of the environment, oil spills, racism, killings, xenophobia, endangered animals – it was all too much. I saw Mother Earth as a very wounded but angry soul, finally empowered to avenge her pain, which younger generations unfortunately have to bear. It was a deconstruction of how our current pleasures (peoples’ greed for wealth and power and materialism) sacrifice the future generation; the main character laments in one scene: 

Mmê Earth, You used to be so healthy for us . . . until we destroyed You. I understand now why You want to purge us from Your womb. But it is unfair. How come we are the ones to suffer for the before-generation’s desires that smoked our future? I hate them. I hate them all.

Much like in my short story “Murders Fell From Our Wombs,” which explored curses in a village setting as well as the stereotypical representation of women, the environment is an antagonist. In “Eclipse Our Sins,” the environment is also an antagonist and somewhat of a savior as it retaliates against the abuse it underwent. I wrote “Eclipse Our Sins” to explore how we abuse the Earth and people similarly. I’m quite a fan of true crime. It’s devastating to hear how people go missing or are murdered and found in horrid, random places. In addition, I am a Black woman – you can imagine the layers of abuse Black women go through. So I was fed up and this was my catharsis. In “Eclipse Our Sins,” at least you are safe from people’s evil acts because Mother Earth enacts punishment instantly and the question becomes: Is that to create a utopian world? But everyone’s definition of utopia is different. I also meditated on the fact that the ground, the trees, the air, the natural environment see everything about a crime. I wondered what would happen if the elements had the voice and power to stop something like that from happening. And if these elements have power, then there is power in illness. Depending on what you believe in, the root cause of a disease or illness may go beyond the physical symptoms – the mind is a very powerful organ. So in this story, characters’ sins manifest as illnesses in their bodies; what you do can destroy you.

I love how the story delves into climate change along with other pollutions. I love this line: â€œWarning! Pollutants rife in the air, in the city: carbon emission, racism, oil spills, sexism, deforestation, misogynism, xenophobia, murder…” How important is it for writers to recognize our natural world in terms of human experience, and how have you done this in other writing, such as “Eco-Humans?”

“Eco-Humans” is actually when I learned that you can design every detail of a building to respond to sustainability, weather, or the sun, whilst managing the costs to build and run it. So I wondered: What if humans were just like buildings? What if the environment became so toxic that every part of them had to be tempered in order to survive? What if all the elements that used to be free – air, sunlight – could no longer be easily absorbed into their bodies? Of course, you’d have companies trying to profit from this. How would poor communities survive? What if you could control how much air they could breathe? And what if it became too expensive to do that? If you manipulated them biologically as you did buildings, to be eco-friendly, what would that world be like?

I believe studying architecture has forced me to consider the natural environment because it influences our lives. It becomes saturated with culture, our actions, etc. Without it, we are nothing. The actions we impose on our environment are similar to the actions we impose on people, hence why there are parallels between pollution and say, racism. We abuse the Earth and now it’s retaliating the way people would. Writers are just like architects, designing and creating worlds. In class, we were taught to design buildings that responded to their environment and climate. That response could be conforming or opposing but we needed to have a valid reason for it. I see writers in the same way; they create and design written works, situated in different parts of the world, perhaps always responding to something.

You have a new novel out, The Silence of the Wilting Skin (Pink Narcissus Press, May 2020). The cover and title alone are intriguing. Can you describe this novel? I imagine that COVID-19 changed the way you were able to participate in readings and signings?

The Silence of the Wilting Skin is about a young woman trapped in an oppressive African city that’s erasing every part of people’s identity. The nameless young woman living in the wards slowly begins to lose her identity: her skin color peels off, people become invisible, and the city plans to destroy the train where they bury their dead. After the narrator is given a warning by her grandmother’s dreamskin, things begin to fall apart. Struggling to hold onto a fluctuating reality, she prescribes herself insomnia in a desperate attempt to save her family. It explores personal identity and the various ways we experience loss.

Here’s a beautiful summary from Publishers Weekly: “Through magnetic prose, dream logic, and lush imagery, Tsamaase delivers a fierce political message. Suffused with both love and righteous anger, this atmospheric anticolonialist battle cry is a tour de force.”

COVID-19 definitely changed things. Everything was done virtually and is still being done virtually so, really, bless the internet!

Does this story happen in a specific place?

The story doesn’t take place in a specific place, but it does take place in Africa. Parts of the setting are based on our city’s urban planning issue. For example, the train tracks that divide the two cities in the novella are based on the train tracks that, in a way, divide our city. This has led to traffic congestion and a lack of ease of movement on both sides for pedestrians and vehicles. Of course people can move in and out of these sites; it’s just that certain things could be accommodated to make it easier for both parties. That’s the train you see on the cover. Secondly, some beliefs in the story are based on myths we heard as kids. For instance, we were told that when we dream and see someone dead in a train calling us, we shouldn’t get on otherwise, we will never wake up. Hence the dreamskin people and the dead people on the train, and the ancestral realm that speaks to the spirituality and beliefs of some African cultures. Thirdly, some of the structures that are described come from traditional African architecture or Western architecture; hence why you see two cities on either side of the train.

Anything else you would like to add?

Thank you for this lovely interview!

I have a couple of forthcoming projects. The only way to find out is to head over to my website and subscribe to my newsletter or join my Patreon, which is where I provide sneak peeks of upcoming works, releases, and where I post details of my work and process. Either way, you can contact me to say hello, tell me how your day has been, or send in questions.

Thanks to you too! I enjoyed getting to know your writing and you a little better.

This article is part of our Wild Authors series. It was originally published on Dragonfly.eco.

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Mary Woodbury, a graduate of Purdue University, runs Dragonfly.eco, a site that explores ecology in literature, including works about climate change. She writes fiction under pen name Clara Hume. Her novel Back to the Garden has been discussed in Dissent Magazine, Ethnobiology for the Future: Linking Cultural and Ecological Diversity (University of Arizona Press), and Uncertainty and the Philosophy of Climate Change (Routledge). Mary lives in Nova Scotia and enjoys hiking, writing, and reading.

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Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

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By Quentin D. Young

For many years now, I’ve mulled over the question of how to write a fictional narrative about the climate crisis in order to successfully reach people’s hearts and minds, and inspire real action. On the one hand, the current state of the Earth demands urgent action from us, which means that the climate stories we tell need to help audiences consciously draw the links and join the dots. In my opinion, being subtle about climate change and featuring it merely as a background element or a subliminal theme is a luxury we don’t have anymore. On the other hand, being didactic and preachy is usually a huge turn-off. Striking the right balance is something of a puzzle – one that I find I must solve anew with each and every climate storytelling project I begin.

MEET THE AUDIENCE HALFWAY

Coming from a screenwriting background, I typically see my stories as visual narratives for the screen. Some years ago, I began work on a climate story in the form of a short film script. Instead of a live-action film though, I envisioned a charming animation with cute and colorful artwork worthy of a Pixar movie. If we’re going to challenge audiences and get them thinking about something as depressing and anxiety-inducing as global warming, we have to meet them halfway and make it easy for them to engage with the material. We need to make our stories entertaining and, yes, “fun.” In my view, this is where there remains plenty of space for storytelling innovation.

A second way I decided to meet the audience halfway was in loosely basing my story on L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. My Oz re-imagining would be an affectionate parody of Baum’s work, and my climate story would function by, first and foremost, engaging audiences through the much-loved source material. But on discovering the prohibitive cost of making an animated short and the scarcity of producers willing to back such a project, I opted to adapt my story into a comic book. A comic book was something I could manage myself while remaining in the pop culture category, which includes popular mediums such as television shows and video games. This was a parameter I had set for the project because, given the scale of the climate problem, I wanted the story to have as much reach as possible. Below is the cover artwork that artist Jean Lins and I eventually created for our charming Oz-meets-climate comic.

Of course, not every climate story needs to riff off a pre-existing work. The draw of the familiar can be achieved in genre terms alone, which could result in some unexpected and fascinating mash-ups. Zombies and climate change? I haven’t tried it myself, but it already sounds interesting to me. In the case of our project, I found that the original Ozmaterial lent itself so well to an environmentalist’s reinterpretation that the satirical opportunities were too delightful to resist. For example, in our story Emerald City has been renamed “Green City.” Having adopted the optimistic philosophy and aesthetics of solarpunk, the Wizard’s society now runs on clean energy and coexists with abundant plant life, as shown in the splash page below.

FIND A NEW ANGLE

As many others have said, not all climate stories need to be apocalyptic dystopias filled with doom and gloom. There’s a place for such a perspective, but there’s also a place for whimsy, humor, and hope, even in the face of climate catastrophe. Taking the lighter approach can indeed help audiences engage with an otherwise dark and depressing subject. This is what we wanted to achieve with our comic, so we embraced comedy and eccentricity. As shown in the panel below, climate deniers are depicted as fat Munchkins in carbon(ara)-excreting robotic suits, which help them move around faster. Crucially, instead of being demonized, these beings are shown to be capable of redemption by the end of the story.

Despite our general aversion to doom and gloom, however, extreme weather does make an appearance, not only as a symbol of climate change but as the main antagonist in the story, shown anthropomorphized in the splash page below. But with a moniker like the “Wicked Weather of the West” and as an echo of Dorothy’s tornado from the original Oztale, climate change is reframed in a meta-fictional light and with enough self-referential humor that, hopefully, audiences won’t recoil from didacticism and, instead, will be more deeply engaged with the story’s satirical point-of-view.

MAKE IT PERSONAL

Hundreds of people perishing in a natural disaster is a statistic, but the needless suffering of one person is a tragedy. As individuals, we are hardwired to relate and empathize with other individuals. Because of this, a huge phenomenon like global warming tends to be hard to depict and grasp in a story. To engage our audiences, we need to bring everything back to the realm of personal human experiences and life lessons. In the case of our comic, the heart of the story isn’t climate change primarily, but the emotional journey of a girl named Dolores. Through her encounters with the fat Munchkins, the Wicked Weather of the West, and the Wizard of Green City, she eventually finds the courage to tell the truth and to apologize for her fibs. In our post-truth times, where the climate issue is itself obfuscated by lies and unscientific misinformation, the story of Dolores as an individual can speak to the larger cause.

THE FINISHED BOOK

It’s been a long journey from my short film script to the comic adaptation, but The Wizard of O₂ is finally a finished book. I must thank the many readers who read my drafts and provided feedback along the way, including the climate storytelling team behind the Natural Resources Defense Council’s (NRDC) Rewrite the Future initiative. They helped with script development early on, when the project only existed as a film script.

As a comic book, The Wizard of O₂ is now published under my imprint, Truth/Dare Media. We’re a publishing startup that focuses on telling important stories through pop culture mediums like comics and audiobooks. The Wizard of O₂ is our debut comic, and it’s currently available digitally through major online bookstores including Amazon, Apple Books, Kobo, and Google Play. It’s also been released on Comixology, an Amazon platform dedicated to digital comics, and the world’s largest comic readership. We’ll be donating a portion of the profits to Fridays For Future, the global youth movement begun by Greta Thunberg. Some of the kids involved with the movement have now read the book, and their feedback has been great!

As a climate storyteller, my mission is to share the story of the climate crisis with new audiences through the wide reach of popular entertainment because, yes, I believe that pop culture can help us save the world. So if you enjoy The Wizard of O₂ and agree that it contributes toward this cause, please help us spread the word!

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Quentin D. Young is an emerging comic creator and a represented script writer whose screenplays have been accepted for submission by leading Hollywood companies including Walt Disney Studios, 20th Century Studios (formerly Fox), and Participant Media. The Wizard of O₂ is his debut comic, and he is currently working on a graphic novel titled Dreamstormer. Formerly an environmental engineer, Quentin writes stories with the aim of entertaining mainstream audiences while also raising awareness and understanding of the unfolding climate crisis.

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Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

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By DM (Deanna) Witman

The world is experiencing a time of extraordinary loss: of species, habitat, ecological connectivity, and personal connection to the natural world. An increasing number of individuals and communities are struggling with grief and other health effects surrounding these losses.

As environmental degradation accelerates across the globe, so too do the emotional impacts on people, causing anxiety, stress, depression, as well as manifestations of violence and aggression. Environmental grief can be triggered by the loss of a favorite childhood swimming beach due to erosion, or an entire island community from rising waters. These losses may, in turn, result in a loss of identity, perhaps associated with declining income from an occupation, or the disappearance of that occupation altogether. What will a lobsterman call himself when there are no more lobsters to be trapped in the waters off the coast of Maine? Cultural distress results from a loss of place value or community identity.

With my Index series, I draw upon my past experiences as a field biologist to process grieving around the losses we are facing as the result of climate change. These photograms serve as a record for what once was: the flora in a small patch of intertidal marsh of the St. George River, where I live and work. Reminiscent of herbarium records, the flora are memorialized and serve as a baseline against the impending change caused by increasing temperatures and rising waters. My small area of intertidal marsh will not be spared; it will bear the impact of these changes.

Each piece is unique, printed on fine printmaking paper, with the trace of each individual plant fixed in perpetuity. These images are produced through gum bichromate, a photographic process dating to the mid-late 1800s, which uses gum arabic, watercolor pigment, and a sensitizer.

Memento mori is an artistic or symbolic reminder of death’s inevitability and the fragility of human life. Authors, artists, and philosophers have worked with it since the days of Plato. With Index, the reminder of life’s fragility and the idea that all life ends at some point is visible in the plant’s memorialized state as a photographic trace on the paper.

In an interview in Cabinet regarding memento mori, photo historian, curator, author, and teacher Geoffrey Batchen noted, “…Such objects seek to remember a loved one, not as someone now dead, but as someone who was once alive, young and vital, with a future before them. In this kind of object, they will always have that future, a comforting thought, perhaps, for those who have been left behind.” The plants that I collected were alive at the time I collected them, and were still alive as they became imprints on paper – an index of these beautiful lives. And while the photograph-objects remind me of their life and perhaps their future demise, I am comforted by their existence in this moment and even in the fact that they existed at all.

After completing Index, Dr. William Hafford, a then colleague of mine, and I began a series of conversations about our shared experience of loss and grief. We suspected that we were not the only people living with this experience. Surely others felt something similar – the loss, the sadness. Could we join forces to work with our communities in Maine?

Our conversations led to a few working sessions and to the idea of creating a resource for our Maine communities, which took the form of a zine titled A Guide to Loss & Grieving in the Anthropocene: a low-budget booklet, which could be mass-produced and shared widely. We received several grants for the project that we used for printing. The zine contains several psychological models of grief paired with images from Index, along with further resources for individuals who may want more information or need assistance.

In addition to the zine, we were curious to learn if others in our communities would be interested in talking about their own experiences surrounding climate change and related loss. We scheduled a number of events in public spaces, such as libraries, across the state. We had no idea if anyone would show up. And what we found was that people did want to talk about this. There is a common feeling, a common experience of mourning, guilt, helplessness, defeat, but also of hope and resiliency. Our aim was to reduce isolation, to bring people together in community so that they might continue to support each other, even after we left.

In 2020, it could not have been clearer that the world was grappling with loss related to climate disruption and its associated impacts from (un)natural disasters, pandemics, migration, and food insecurity. As the year unfolded and losses were felt so deeply on so many fronts, I started work on a video/performance piece to continue my exploration of the phenomena of grief. This two-channel piece is titled The Haircut… or Learning to Let Go. In my research about mourning and grief, I found a number of references to the cutting of hair; in many cultures, cutting one’s hair is an expression of grief. I had envisioned this piece prior to the pandemic, but as the early days of the pandemic wore on, it seemed an even more necessary act – cutting my hair as an expression, as a physical response to my psychological state and concerns regarding everything that was being lost, and that we continue to lose.

At some point, I hope to turn my attention to resiliency and hope. I continue to ask myself big questions such as: “How do we carry forth in our daily lives and stay hopeful?” “What can I do to help others connect more deeply to their surroundings?” Perhaps there aren’t any straightforward answers and what I am looking for in resiliency is more of a process than a desired outcome. I look forward to continuing my investigation and explorations to see where it all leads me.

(Top image: (left) Pontederia cordata, 2018, unique, 25.75 x 19.75 in.; (right) Sium suave, 2018, unique, 25.75 x 19.75 in.)

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DM Witman is a trandisciplinary artist working at the intersection of environmental disruption and the human relationship to place in the Age of the Anthropocene. Her creative practice is deeply rooted within the realm of the effects of humans on this world using photographic materials, video, and installation. DM is affiliated with Klompching Gallery, New York and Cove Street Arts, Portland. Recent interviews and publications include The Guardian, BBC Culture, WIRED, Boston Globe, and Art New England. She actively exhibits her work and has been recognized with grants from the Maine Arts Commission, The Kindling Fund, and the Puffin Foundation.

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Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

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By Bill Russell

When I witnessed massive forest and home fires rampaging through my Northern California community and saw the devastation they wrought, I woke up to the reality of global warming. I wanted to respond in my own creative way. We are living through the Anthropocene, this era of geologic history in which humans are the primary environmental force. As a painter and a visual journalist, I feel an urgency to share these dire messages through my art.

In my new painting, The Deluge (detail above), I tackle the subject of sea level rise, which not only affects coastal cities but also presents an existential threat to our culture. Unlike with the California fires, I have no direct experience of rising seas, but I am no less moved to make art about this phenomenon.

The Deluge is an apocalyptic vision that builds upon my interest in human-influenced ecology, which is bringing discord to our planet. I show the white, hot sun bearing down through a depleted atmosphere and icebergs set adrift from our melting polar ice caps. While these ancient icebergs don’t cause sea levels to rise, they do provide an invaluable record of our planet’s climate history through the study of their ice cores. Iconic artifacts of our culture have come unmoored, like beach balls and sea mines, U-boats and polar bears. We see a freighter run aground, a sinking Titanic, and a half-submerged Chrysler Building. Container ships toss their containers. Plastic bottles float in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The Kraken, a mythic peril of the sea, devours ships. Noah’s Ark offers a possible means of survival.

Two particular historic paintings inspired me during my work on The Deluge: Claude Monet’s Impression, Sunrise and Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa. 

Impression, Sunrise, painted in the spring of 1873, depicts the urban-industrial landscape at the port of Le Havre, France, with small rowboats in the foreground, smokestacks and steamships in the middle ground, and a red sun in the far distance. Monet found beauty in the picturesque atmospheric effects in the commingling of mist, steam, fog, and smoke. I wanted to make a similarly sublime observation on the effects of the pollution that Monet saw.

Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa shows desperate yet romanticized figures adrift on turbulent seas. It was infamous for its brutal depiction of an actual event. It was also scandalous, given the political implications and ambiguity of whether the men on the raft were to be rescued or not. These sailors are unable to see their survival on the horizon. We are also confronted with an unknowable beyond. Can we be rescued from climate change? Will we take the actions necessary to change our own foreboding future?

While The Deluge is my latest reflection on human-induced climate change, back in 2015, my artwork reflected the sadness I felt seeing the Valley Fire destroy homes and displace members of the Lake County, California community. I drew on location among the detritus and made paintings of the devastation. It motivated me to produce art that captured that feeling. I wanted to understand how it happened. As it’s understood now, the origin of that fire was a human error, but fires have and will intensify – the result of warmer, drier conditions. These are, in large part, the product of global warming.

A warming planet means a warming ocean. Rising water temperatures can trigger coral reefs to expel the colorful algae living in their tissue, which turns them sickly white. In Coral Bleaching Diptych, I wanted to show the before-and-after views of this effect and to draw focus to this mostly unseen ruination.

Global climate change has become a substantive subject matter in my paintings. It brings a depth of meaning to my work. I educate myself in the research. Through my creative practice, I become more aware and engaged. But more importantly, these stories need to be told. Our planet faces serious, pressing challenges that are only getting worse. Look to the artists and their work to illuminate, educate, and activate.

(Top image: Bill Russell, The Deluge (detail), 36” x 36”, acrylic on canvas, 2020)

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Bill Russell is a painter, illustrator and designer based in Marin County, California. He earned his degree from Parsons School of Design in New York and was an Adjunct Professor of Illustration at the California School of the Arts in San Francisco, as well as a staff artist at the San Francisco Chronicle. He has completed artist residencies at Recology and the Kala Art Institute. You can see more of his paintings at Bill Russell Fine Art and see his reportage at Russell Reportage.

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Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

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By Amy Brady

This month I have for you an interview with Tory Stephens, the New England Network Weaver for Grist’s solutions lab, Fix, and the Director of Imagine 2200, Fix’s exciting new writing contest that’s currently seeking submissions. 

The contest seek stories inspired by Afrofuturism, solarpunk, and futuristic writing styles that embrace Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, disabled, feminist, and queer identities and communities. Judges are looking for stories that center climate solutions and the experiences of communities impacted first and hardest by climate change, with the aim of imagining a more just and sustainable future. 

The winning writer will be awarded $3,000, with the second and third-place writers receiving $2,000 and $1,000, respectively. Imagine 2200’s judge line-up is super impressive: Adrienne Maree Brown, Morgan Jerkins, and Kiese Laymon will be choosing the winning stories. 

I spoke with Tory about why Grist launched this contest, the kinds of writers he hopes will submit work, and the role that climate storytelling plays in the wider discourse on climate change. 

Tell us about Grist’s solutions lab, Fix. What are its goals? What’s your role there?

Fix is a relatively new program at Grist. It grew in part out of the Grist 50, our annual list of “Fixers” – up-and-coming changemakers working toward a better world for all. A few years into producing the Grist 50 list, the team (led largely by Grist’s founder, Chip Giller) started convening each new cohort of Fixers, and making more of an effort to seed connections and stay in touch with the folks who had been featured. That gave rise to a new program called Fix, which combines solutions-focused storytelling with community building and events. Our goal is to accelerate equitable climate solutions, and lead the conversation on what’s possible in addressing the climate crisis. 

My job at Fix is a fun one – I’m the network weaver for New England, where Fix is piloting a regional approach to community building. And now I’m acting as the creative director for Imagine 2200, which was actually born in New England. 

Imagine 2200 is Fix’s new climate-fiction contest. What inspired this contest, and what do you hope it will motivate readers to do or think?

The first idea for a work of fiction set in the year 2200, modeling a just and sustainable future, came out of an event Fix hosted in the summer of 2019. That was just before I joined the team – I was actually at the event as a participant. But we were all really excited about the idea, and it seemed like something that wasn’t yet in Grist’s or Fix’s wheelhouse, but could be. In the spring of 2020, I helped plan and produce a second community event in New England (or rather, on Zoom) that centered around a visioning exercise to workshop the idea of 2200 – what would define a “clean, green, and just future” in a time that feels so far away, and how we might get there. The ideas generated by the folks from that event laid the foundation for Imagine 2200: Climate fiction for future ancestors. 

The year 2200 is so far away that it almost feels like a blank slate. (Note: Stories don’t have to be set in 2200 for our contest – they can be anywhere between now and then. But part of the idea is to remove the confines of our current predicament and let folks create a world they’d want their grandkids, or their great-great-great-grandkids to live in.) We’re hoping Imagine 2200 will inspire visions of the future that haven’t even been dreamt up yet – but that could inspire real action in the present day. And our goal with the final collection of stories is to show readers different views of the world we could have if we take decisive action against the climate crisis, again in a variety of ways. That’s part of our mission at Grist and especially at Fix: to make the story of a better world so irresistible, you want it right now. 

How do you see genres like Afrofuturism and Solarpunk relating to climate fiction? What do you hope that the submissions draw from these genres?

Afrofuturism (as well as Indigenous, Latinx, disabled, feminist, and queer futures, and others) speaks to the kind of hopeful, equitable fiction we’re going for. These genres – or really, these movements – depict a future where the world isn’t set up to oppress and exclude folks from marginalized communities, but instead places them at the center, as the heroes, the creators, the leaders. The technologically advanced and ecologically sustainable society of Wakanda is a famous example. 

We know that climate change doesn’t impact all people equally. The fossil fuel industry that we know today would not exist if it weren’t for society’s willingness to make some communities sacrifice zones. It’s widely accepted now that we can’t divorce the climate crisis from systemic racism – and so any serious, comprehensive solutions to climate change have to put equity at the center, and have to be informed and led by communities on the frontlines. With Imagine 2200, our goal is to show that in action, to show what happens when we value lived experience and put people first. And we’re adding a dash of hopepunk – compassion and perseverance, even in the face of what may seem like insurmountable challenges.

What role do you believe climate fiction in general, whether as part of this contest or elsewhere, can play in either the wider discourse on climate change or among “solutions” to the crisis? In other words, what power do you see as inherent in climate fiction?

I think art can be incredibly motivating. It’s society’s mirror. In some cases, that mirror is unflattering – think, like, a Black Mirror episode. Or an investigative journalism piece by Grist. That kind of work can push society or specific institutions to self-correct, or at least to question the direction we’re headed. And then in some cases, the mirror is aspirational, or creatively distorted. It inspires and changes our view of what the world could be. With climate change, there are so many variables and so much uncertainty about the future we’re going to have, and the world we’re going to leave our children’s children. That’s why I think it’s an especially rich area for fiction – both the scary kind and the hopeful kind. At Fix, obviously, we’re focusing on the latter. And the hope is that it leads to real behavior change in the present, real conversations about the way out of this crisis and the way to build a world that works for everyone. 

Whose voices, either in climate fiction or the climate movement more generally, are still underrepresented? Who would you like to hear more from?

We want stories that are by and for the communities we come from, are adjacent to, and care about. Representation matters, but surface representation ain’t it. Me, my friends, family, and my community have richly layered identities, and in many instances, it’s our social and political experiences that are the drivers of our story and actions. We want climate fiction that builds deeply intersectional systems, worlds and solutions, because what’s happening right now is erasure. This is why we’re asking folk to disrupt the genre. And this is why we’re creating a platform for all the voices. We’re loudly saying that we are the authors of our own future. And we will not be erased. We need and want everyone to see themselves in this hopeful vision so we can co-create the abundance we deserve, and so we and our home can heal from the violence and extraction. That’s what it means to be a future ancestor.

What’s next for you and Fix? 

Honest answer: everything! We’re a fast-growing team with a lot of big ideas. When the pandemic is fully behind us, we’re looking forward to resuming our in-person gatherings and continuously finding new ways to engage our community, and the public. We’re always experimenting on the storytelling side as well, and aiming to expand our content offerings with multimedia, interactives, fiction, and beyond. There are a million things we haven’t done – but just you wait!

(Top image by Carolina Rodríguez Fuenmayor)

This article is part of the Climate Art Interviews series. It was originally published in Amy Brady’s “Burning Worlds” newsletter. Subscribe to get Amy’s newsletter delivered straight to your inbox.

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Amy Brady is the Deputy Publisher of Guernica magazine and Senior Editor of the Chicago Review of Books. Her writing about art, culture, and climate has appeared in the Village Voice, the Los Angeles Times, Pacific Standard, the New Republic, and other places. She is also the editor of the monthly newsletter “Burning Worlds,” which explores how artists and writers are thinking about climate change. She holds a PHD in English and is the recipient of a CLIR/Mellon Library of Congress Fellowship. Read more of her work at AmyBradyWrites.com at and follow her on Twitter at @ingredient_x.

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Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

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By Peterson Toscano

Marissa Slaven talks about her novel, Code Blue, an eco-mystery. Drawing on her love of the coast in New England and even her background as a palliative care physician, Marissa has created a near future world that is stressed by climate change in a society that has chosen to respond creatively to it. About the book, Marissa writes:

In my novel Code Blue, I imagine the future where climate change is worse than it is now, but people are at least trying. And no one is trying harder than the main characters, Tic, Phish, and Lee, a group of teens at a science academy who are trying to unravel mysteries both global and intensely personal.

She expertly weaves in various mysteries her main character, a high school student, must solve. These mysteries are both personal and scientific. Her book is one you cannot easily put down once you start reading it. My talk with her is followed by Marissa reading from the book.

And coming out later this year, look for Code Red, a sequel.

Follow Marissa Slaven on Twitter: @MarissaSlaven

Next month: Jennie Carlisle, curator and director of the Smith Gallery at Appalachian State University, and Laura England, a senior lecturer. They are two of three co-facilitators of ASU’s Climate Stories Collaborative. They consider the questions: How does an artist stay in a creative space? When producing climate art, what is more important – the process or the product? 

If you like what you hear, you can listen to full episodes of Citizens’ Climate Radio on iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, SoundCloud, Podbean, Northern Spirit Radio, Google Play, PlayerFM, and TuneIn Radio. Also, feel free to connect with other listeners, suggest program ideas, and respond to programs in the Citizens’ Climate Radio Facebook group or on Twitter at @CitizensCRadio.

This article is part of The Art House series.

______________________________

As host of Citizens’ Climate Radio, Peterson Toscano regularly features artists who address climate change in their work. The Art House section of his program includes singer/songwriters, visual artists, comics, creative writers, and playwrights. Through a collaboration with Artists and Climate Change and Citizens’ Climate Education, each month Peterson reissues The Art House for this blog. If you have an idea for The Art House, contact Peterson: radio @ citizensclimatelobby.org

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Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

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By Joan Sullivan

Human culture is and has always been inexorably connected to the ultimate source of light and warmth, the sun.

Maria Popova, 2016

Following up on my first post of 2021 – about an epic hand-embroidered tapestry that illustrates humanity’s 5,000-year relationship with fossil fuels – I want to broaden the focus of this ongoing Renewable Energy series (four years already!) by including occasional musings on the larger context in which we currently find ourselves: an energy transition.

There have been at least 12 energy transitions since the beginning of human civilization. To state the obvious: humanity has managed to survive and prosper through each of the previous energy transitions, and we will undoubtedly do so again as our energy mix shifts inexorably from fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas) to renewable sources of energy (wind, water, solar, geothermal).

We are fortunate to be living witnesses to, and participants in, this historic shift to a post-carbon future. If history has taught us anything, it is this: what was once considered a dominant and irreplaceable energy source can suddenly find itself playing second fiddle to a disruptive new energy source or technology. 

A common feature of energy transitions throughout history, including the current one, is that multiple energy sources can and do co-exist for decades, sometimes even centuries – e.g., wood is still burned in all corners of the world for cooking and heating. But eventually, the disruptive energy source becomes mainstream and dominates all aspects of our lives and economies, ushering in a new era of cultural values and meanings uniquely associated with that energy source.

“New energy sources are very much like new art,” wrote Barry Lord in his extraordinary 2016 book, Art & Energy: How Culture Changes. Like avant-garde art, cutting-edge energy “introduces new values yet never invalidates the masterworks of the past.” He explains:

Because our sources of surplus energy are so basic to everything we are and do, the values and meanings associated with those that have been with us for a long time seem to be fundamental – the sense of collective identity or the values of domesticity and urbanism, for instance. Almost all of these old values stay with us, continuing to inspire and sustain meaningful works of art. But the new values and meanings that come with each energy transition in turn form a cutting edge, changing our perception of ourselves, of others and of what matters most in the world around us at that time.

When the energy source is new, cutting-edge artists work with a (mostly unuttered) awareness of it. As the source of energy becomes more dominant, all the rest of us come to share that awareness, whether we express it or not. It is the artists who help us see it (emphasis added).

Throughout 2021, I will return frequently to Lord’s book to muse about this reciprocal relationship between energy transitions and art. Let’s start by looking at a 19^th century British artist whose avant-garde, pre-impressionist landscapes captured the global transition from wind (for tall sailing ships) to coal (for steam-powered ships and trains) at the height of the industrial revolution. 

James Mallord William Turner, also known as JMW Turner, was practically alone among his Romantic contemporaries to treat industrial technology (including the energy transition) as a subject worthy of artistic consideration. According to the TATE Britain, Turner “lived and worked at the peak of the industrial revolution. Steam replaced sail; machine-power replaced manpower; political and social reforms transformed society. Many artists ignored these changes but Turner faced up to these.”

Accepted into the Royal Academy of Art at age 15, Turner had a long and prolific artistic career that lasted more than 60 years. In the last two decades of his life – which overlapped with many profound technological, social and political changes – Turner’s work became increasingly abstract. (As an aside, I find it interesting to note that half a century later, in the context of the disastrous first word war, the Russian abstract painter Wassily Kandinsky was quoted as saying : “The more frightening the world becomes, the more art becomes abstract.” The same would be true today…)

Two of Turner’s most famous paintings were created in the context of this rapidly changing world in the middle of the 19th century. Both of these paintings explore Turner’s fascination with technology, notably the transition from wind to coal-powered steam for “modern” transport.

The Fighting Temeraire (above), completed in 1839, is one of Turner’s most famous paintings. At first glance, we imagine a calm marine landscape on the river Thames in London. But the genius of Turner is that behind this placid scene, a dramatic historical event is unfolding as a metaphor of the global shift from wind to coal, an energy transition that ultimately would transform the world. Here, the aging hulk of the once mighty Temeraire, a veteran 98-gun warship (pale, ghostly, weak: stripped of its sails) is being pulled by a small steam-powered tugboat (modern, strong, polluting) on her last voyage – at sunset no less – as the age of sail gives way to the age of steam.

Turner’s retelling of the historic Temeraire being tugged to its last berth to be broken up for scrap is absolutely magnificent in its subtlety. And yet, art historians to this day are still debating whether Turner embraced the industrial revolution as a progressive path towards a new world, or whether he was expressing melancholy for the inevitable loss of a perceived golden age. Or perhaps both.

Five years after the Temeraire, Turner produced his masterpiece Rain, Steam and Speed(1844). While both paintings explore the tension between the pre-industrial and the modern, Rain, Steam and Speed vibrates with energy and excitement compared to the more placid Temeraire. Seven years before his death, Turner created the impression of dazzling speed as a modern coal-powered steam train hurtles towards the viewer diagonally across a rainy landscape.

Rain, Steam and Speed is considered an allegory of man against nature: it is impossible to distinguish which steam is produced by the train (man) and which is produced by the rain (nature). Turner is purposely ambiguous; he never divulges his opinion about the breathtaking speed, noise and pollution of coal-powered steam trains. He leaves that up to the viewer. But his metaphoric treatment of the energy transition, subsumed by light and color, suggests that Turner, in his last two decades, must have seen the writing on the wall and embraced the implacable march towards a coal-powered future. This was prescient: nearly 200 years later, coal may no longer be “king” but it still generates almost 40% of the world’s electricity.

Mapped: The world’s coal power plants

Barry Lord reminds us in Art & Energy: How Culture Changes that energy transitions are also engines of cultural change. For example, he explains how the age of coal created a culture of production; how the age of oil and gas created a culture of consumption; and how the age of renewables is presently creating a culture of stewardship. According to Lord, it is artists who help us “to see” and make sense of these overlapping and constantly evolving transitions, even though the historical pace of past energy transitions has been longer than the lives of the artists living through them.

So while Turner’s avant-garde abstract landscapes “were mockingly dismissed by his critics as ‘the fruits of a diseased eye and a reckless hand’” – and then later acclaimed to be masterpieces – the same volte-face awaits the frequently maligned renewable energy industry so despised by climate deniers. But history is on our side. Lord explains:

When an energy source is incipient, the cultural values that it engenders are seen as innovative and open to dispute, just like cutting-edge art. Once the new energy source becomes dominant, the values that it brought with it become mainstream. With the renewable energy culture of stewardship, that process is happening in our own time. This movement from marginal to mainstream is directly duplicated in the arts. Performance art, for example, based on stewardship of the body, has moved from a marginal activity to a mainstream art form.

Artists and creatives of all stripes and colors, it’s time to choose your creative weapon! Over the next nine years, I challenge us all to stay razor focused on this beautiful concept of the age of stewardship – to will it into existence! No more fire-and-brimstone. Our goal, at the end of the second decade of the third millennium, is to look back and “see” how we have changed history by relentlessly drawing attention to the many positive, regenerative, and socially just cultural values associated with the current energy transition. Like JMW Turner.

ADDENDUM

Two major Turner gallery exhibitions planned for 2020 were postponed until 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. At the Tate Britain, Turner’s Modern World is on exhibition until March 7, 2021. On the other side of the big pond, Turner and the Sublime is on exhibition at the Musée national des beaux arts au Québec (MNBAQ) in Quebec City, Canada until May 2, 2021. Tickets are required for both exhibitions. Ã€ qui la chance!

For a fascinating gallery talk about Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire, check out the UK’s National Gallery video. 

For a preview to Mike Leigh’s award-winning 2014 biographical drama based on the last 25 years of JMW Turner’s life, see this link.

(Top image: Close-up of JMW Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire, downloaded from the National Gallery, licensed for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons agreement.)

This article is part of the Renewable Energy series.

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Joan Sullivan is a Canadian photographer focused on the energy transition. In her monthly column for Artists and Climate Change, Joan explores the intersection of art and the energy transition. She is currently experimenting with abstract photography as a new language to express her grief about climate breakdown. You can find Joan on Twitter and Visura.

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Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

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By Susan Hoffman Fishman

Since the 4^th century BC, explorers, geographers, archaeologists, cartographers, navigators, sealers, whalers, miners, scientists, artists, writers, and others have traveled to the Arctic to observe, document, research, explore, and exploit its beauty, its ecosystems, and its natural resources. They have described being awed by its grandeur, diminished by its scale, mesmerized by its stillness, and scared by its awesome power. Many have reported being changed in fundamental ways by the experience. 

In 2010, when British poet, screenwriter, and librettist Nick Drake was invited to join a three-week trip to the Norwegian Arctic by the international climate/arts nonprofit Cape Farewell in order to investigate the changes brought about by the climate crisis, his personal journey of exploration was added to the long list of others that had come before him.

Cape Farewell’s 2010 Art and Science expedition sailed around Svalbard, an archipelago 550 miles north of Norway, on the two-mast vessel Noorderlicht with five marine scientists and ten artists from around the world. Prior to embarking on the voyage, Drake had never thought deeply about the climate crisis nor addressed it in his work. When he first accepted the invitation from Cape Farewell, he thought he would be encountering a wild, pristine land that had not been spoiled by human intervention. With the help of the expedition’s scientists, he soon learned about the devastating acceleration of glacier melt, pollution, and human exploitation. In his first written piece documenting his impressions, Drake describes in poetic language the millennia-old memories embedded in the ice as well as the vestiges of industrial activity that were melting the glacier in front of his eyes: 

It’s good to know this vast frozen beast, born of the last Ice Age, is still here; suddenly it’s strangely comforting to think of it as a world library of snow – for it’s true if fanciful that the snow of the winters of all our lives is somewhere in here, crushed down to ice; so is that which fell during Shakespeare’s winter’s tale, on the ice-fairs on the Thames; and the snow that fell when Breughel’s hunters were returning home; and the snow that fell long before anything human was really here. And now, the warm breath of billions of lives, and the CO2 from the stacks of foundries and factories, and worldwide traffic jams, and the collected vapour trails of all the flights that have ever flown, is melting away the monster, little by little.

Drake also recorded himself reading a poem based on the blog entry above while he was still onboard the Noorderlicht.

Two particular incidents that occurred during the 2010 expedition impacted Drake in a visceral way and informed the content and format of The Farewell Glacier (2012), his book-length poem, which he wrote when he returned to the UK. The first event happened as the Noorderlicht was traveling down a passageway through pack ice in the northern part of the archipelago. Suddenly the ice closed around the ship, which became instantly trapped. After many tries by the ship’s pilot to disengage from the ice, the passengers were instructed to prepare for an evacuation by helicopter. Ultimately, the pilot was able to extract the ship without the need for a sea rescue. 

The dramatic experience left Drake with a very real understanding of how, within a split second, one’s life can become endangered in this harsh environment. He also developed a strong sense of connection to the young men who had come to the Arctic in previous centuries aboard whaling ships and on other expeditions without the advanced technology that provided the crew and passengers of the Noorderlicht with an immediate lifeline. Drake later incorporated the voices of these untrained and vulnerable young men in The Farewell Glacier. Over the following year, he used other human and non-human voices to tell the Western, and especially European, story of the Arctic. 

The second experience that impacted Drake was a real-time visual example of the climate crisis in action. Sailing towards a large glacier, the expedition scientists indicated the area in the water where the glacier had once been. It was a full 40 minutes before the ship reached the edge of where the glacier was currently located. From this and other “aha” moments, Drake felt an immense responsibility to write something about the extreme acceleration of climate change that would appeal to the hearts and minds of the general public. 

The Farewell Glacier is a chronological account of the Western, and especially European, experience in the Arctic told through the voices of the humans who encountered it, the chemical elements that have polluted it, (including methane, PCB, POP and DDT, etc.) and other non-human actors, such as a sea-shanty, the sun, pteropods, and an ice-core sample. He calls it “a story about wonder and consumption,” of “exploration and exploitation.” 

Drake wrote The Farewell Glacier in stages. The first section of the poem that he composed after he returned from the Arctic was the voice of “The Future,” which is both a tale of warning and a call to action. In 2019, Fleabag star, Andrew Scott, and his sister Hannah recorded “The Future,” which was then posted on the twitter page Culture Declares Emergency and can be found on Drake’s website. 

In 2012, the National Maritime Museum in London commissioned Drake to write a poem that would tell the story of the Western experience in the Arctic as part of a major installation developed by United Visual Artists, in collaboration with Cape Farewell. The result was the full text of The Farewell Glacier.

Drake describes the book as a “collection of monologues or arias” from “the deep past, and into the near future because as Inuit say,‘we are the people who have changed nature.’” The excerpts below are just two of the voices in The Farewell Glacier that are part of this powerful Arctic story. 

When I was twelve
To win a bet
I walked across the thin ice of the frozen Severn
And never looked back.
Later, I resolved to walk
From Alaska to Svalbard
Across the thin ice
Via the Pole of Inaccessibility
And the North Pole.
My Inuit friends left a map
Pinned to the hut door
Marked with the places they thought I would die.
It was 3,800 miles;
We left in February,
Four men and forty dogs. 
And in July we made camp
Because the ice was not drifting 
In our favour.

When the sun returned
We continued through the next summer
To reach 90 degrees North.
I telegraphed the Queen.
Trying to stand on the pole 
Was like trying to step
On the shadow of a bird
Circling overhead.
Two weeks later
A man took the first step on the Moon
And by the time we got home
We were forgotten.
You couldn’t walk it now,
Even if you wanted to –
Why not?
Because the sea is melting,
And no one can walk on water.

— Wally Hebert (1934 – 2007), British polar explorer, writer and artist

We were born in your dream of the future – 
Released by fire
We ascended the winding stairs of the smoke stacks
Until we reached the orange sunrise
And the blue sky.
No one waved goodbye.
No one saw us go;
We were uncountable
And invisible.
One way or another 
We were carried north
In the hands of the winds,
Through the stories of the rivers,
By the generosity of the oceans;
And when we arrived at the cold
Top of the world
It felt like home, sweet home;
And we waited in the long darkness
Until at last
The first light of the year transmuted us
Out of thin air and we came to rest
In ice and snow and black water.
Now we accumulate
And magnify
In the cells of fish, in the eggs of birds,
Inside the warm coats of seals and bears;
And in the wombs of mothers
We concentrate so the faces of the future
Take on our features,
And we sing our names into the ears
Of the unborn:
PCB; POP; DDT:
Cesium, technetium;
Mercury.

— Mercury, chemical element also known as quicksilver

Since his voyage to the Arctic, Drake has written other poetic works on the climate crisis. Most notably, he wrote the libretto for a choral work entitled, Earth Song, in collaboration with composer Rachel Portman. The piece premiered on September 27, 2019 at St. Paul’s Knightsbridge and was broadcast on the BBC in October of 2019. As Portman described it, Earth Song is an expression of how “humans are as one with the earth and inseparable.” Drake’s libretto incorporates lines from Greta Thunberg’s powerful speech at Davos in 2019. 

Additionally, in 2018 Drake created the libretto for The Cave, an opera on climate grief, in collaboration with composer Tansy Davies. The Cave follows “a grieving father’s quest for survival in a world devastated by climate change” and was produced in a cavernous warehouse space in London.

Ten years after his expedition, Drake still speaks passionately about the Arctic and its extraordinary light, stillness, silence, and ancient landscape, but mostly he is on a mission to expose his words about the climate crisis beyond the poetry world to create awareness and inspire change. He disagrees with Auden’s oft-quoted line, “poetry makes nothing happen” but sees his poetry as a signpost for the way forward. His commitment towards that end is what happens when you take a poet to the Arctic. 

(Top image: Poet Nick Drake in the High Arctic. Photo by Deborah Warner. Poetry excerpts by permission of Nick Drake, The Farewell Glacier, Bloodaxe Books, 2012.)

This article is part of Imagining Water, a series on artists of all genres who are making the topic of water and climate disruption a focus of their work and on the growing number of exhibitions, performances, projects and publications that are appearing in museums, galleries and public spaces around the world with water as a theme.

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Susan Hoffman Fishman is a painter, public artist and writer whose work has been exhibited in widely in museums and galleries throughout the U.S. Since 2011, all of her paintings, installations and photographs have addressed water and climate change. She co-created a national, participatory public art project, The Wave, which addresses our mutual need for and interdependence on water and which has inspired thousands of adults and children of all ages, abilities and backgrounds to protect this vital resource. Her most recent body of work calls attention to the growing number of rampikes along our shores – trees that have been exposed to salt water and died as a result of rising tides.

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Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

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By Mary Woodbury

Thanks so much to Stormbird Press‘s Donna Mulvenna for allowing the reprinting of this interview. She talked with Amy Barker about her new novel, Paradise Earth, published by Stormbird Press in early 2020. Amy was the winner of Australia’s 2008 Queensland Premier’s Literary Award for Best Emerging Author. Her stunning debut novel Omega Park won the 2012 IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People) Ena Noël Award, and was shortlisted for the 2009 FAW Christina Stead Award.

The aftershocks from 1996 continued, year after year, often in the life of the individual more devastating than the Port Arthur massacre itself. Yet always the subsequent tragedies could be traced back to that unspeakable Sunday.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Coming home to Tasman Peninsula with her Northern Irish partner, Ruth journeys into her own psychic trauma as well as that projected onto the raw, monumental coast. When Ruth’s brother, John, helps his fourteen-year-old son apply for a firearm permit – almost two-and-a-half decades after Port Arthur â€“ they risk condemning those who do not remember the past to repeat it.

A Port Arthur survivor, Marina has returned to the Peninsula with her brother Moon to pack up Doo-No-Harm, the family holiday home, after their mother’s death. Marina’s personhood was so violated by her early life experience that she has been left an angry she-wolf about to set out on the hunt. In a convoy of duck rescuers, the siblings head for a confrontation with shooters on the wetland.

In these lives choreographed by trauma, damage, and the ramifications of willful forgetfulness, transformation can only occur after an extremely painful lesson.

CHAT WITH AUTHOR

Donna: Hi Amy. Paradise Earth. It’s just fantastic. I pushed many aspects of my life aside so that I could keep reading. One of the things I loved most was the powerful way in which you introduced readers to issues that divide communities throughout the world today. Can you tell us what motivated you to write about the events surrounding the Port Arthur massacre and how you are able to write with such profound empathy for each character?

As a writer, there is really no higher compliment you can receive than a reader telling you they felt compelled to continue reading your book so I appreciate that. I certainly felt compelled to write Paradise Earth. I found myself uniquely poised to write about the events in a work of fiction. While not at Port Arthur on the day of the massacre, I spent my formative years on Tasman Peninsula, with both victims and members of the gunman’s family. If I had been more directly affected, I imagine I would not have been willing, nor able, to explore the events in a novel. At the same time, without the personal connection to the subject matter I would not have found the courage to approach it. One of my main motivations to write Paradise Earth was to explore the unanswered questions – those of the community, survivors, and all those affected – that still surround the massacre.

Regarding issues that divide communities, as one of my characters says in the book, there are a lot of good people who own guns. In Australia, we’ve determined that there’s no place for guns that are nothing but human-killing devices and after Port Arthur these were banned. The novel examines the genuine reasons for private firearm ownership (including self-loading and pump action rifles and shotguns) that remain, i.e., recreational hunting and primary production.

As a work in progress, Paradise Earth won the 2013 DJ ‘Dinny’ O’Hearn Memorial Fellowship, the judges commenting that the narrative “is deeply inward and managed with a keen eye”. It is due to be released in April 2020. How long has it taken to write the book and why?

I began writing Paradise Earth in July 2009, during the week leading up to the release of my debut novel, Omega Park. In all the excitement, I sought sanctuary at Varuna, The National Writers House in the Blue Mountains, where I found time and space to write the opening 15,000 words of a first draft. So it has taken me essentially ten years to write the book. The best way I can think to explain the process is that during that time I didn’t only write one book but a series of books. With each new book, while things like the main setting and core characters remained, there was always a completely new plot, certain characters were killed off and others introduced. Even the core characters grew and changed from one book to the next, for example, entering different professions or becoming parents.

The reason for a constantly evolving novel is so that it remains connected with the outside world. That means while you are writing you are monitoring important events or news relevant to your subject matter, collecting this information and then reflecting it back within the world of your novel. With a major project like this, you have to be able to adapt.

You hold degrees in English Literature and Creative Writing. I have to ask… can anyone learn to write like this or do you possess an innate gift?

I was writing from a very early age. I have “work” from when I was about five years old. I remember in my final year of primary school winning a competition amongst all of the students in my grade to create the dust jacket of a novel. It was the cover art and a blurb for the back cover. Then in high school, my English teachers would tell me they would “be first in line to buy the bestseller.” Personally, I consider it a gift but such a gift is not much use without discipline, commitment, and sacrifice. Anyone will learn valuable things by doing a creative writing or related degree but knowing what I do about the life of a writer, I wouldn’t advise anyone to pursue it as a career unless they felt they had no other options, that it was their calling. If you love something as much as you love writing, and you’re as good at it, then don’t write. Choose the other thing. As the author Hubert Selby Jr. put it, “Being an artist doesn’t take much. Just everything you got.”

I believe you were well on your way to becoming a lawyer, when you had a drastic change of direction and pursued writing instead. What initial steps did you take to become a writer?

I did in fact re-enroll in law, right before my credits were due to expire for prior studies, my last chance to get my degree, with the sole aim of practicing animal law. A few weeks into the semester, I was offered an internship with a film producer (the first money I ever earned from writing was having a feature film screenplay commissioned and optioned), so I quit again!

The initial serious step I took to becoming an author was to apply for an elite course, a Fine Arts degree that only accepted twelve creative writing students each year. As part of the application you had to submit a folio of your work. I used this as a test for myself, to see if someone qualified might think that I possessed potential and/or talent. As it turned out, I was ranked first amongst all the applicants that year and I graduated with distinction after three years of study. In my final year, I began work on what was to be my debut novel, Omega Park, working with a supervisor. Five years later, Omega Park was published.

Amy, you have won multiple awards and received wide critical acclaim for your first novel, Omega Park. What has that early acknowledgement meant to you? And did it change how you wrote Paradise Earth?

The kinds of acknowledgements you’ve mentioned certainly help to increase your confidence. After the publication of Omega Park, probably the most meaningful thing I read from a critic was a comment about me being a courageous author who is not afraid to tackle confronting issues of contemporary Australian life. When writing a book like Paradise Earth, you reflect on this kind of feedback time and again, particularly during trying periods. It provides ongoing encouragement.

What do you like most about Paradise Earth? Do you have a favorite moment, character, or line? And when you began writing were their moments when your inspiration surprised you?

This is a difficult question for me to answer. Honestly, what I like most about Paradise Earth is my personal connection to the subject matter. To have felt that I not only ought to write this novel but that I must write this novel, that this was my novel to write, to have completed this long and often times challenging mission (“task” just doesn’t do the journey justice), and to have found it the absolutely perfect publishing home. The existence of this novel gives extra meaning to my past and adds value to life experiences. It really is much more than just a work of fiction to me.

Stormbird Press is a relatively new press whose mission it is to defend nature and empower communities through the power of story. Why is it important to you to align yourself with an organization that is trying to make positive change in the world?

Stormbird’s mission is one very close to my own heart. I consider signing with Stormbird Press to not only be a great opportunity but an excellent investment. As an author, my success is Stormbird’s success and as a publisher whose mission I deeply care about, Stormbird’s ultimate success is my success. In my view, this is true partnership and the kind that is difficult, if not near on impossible, to find as an author in the publishing world. I can’t imagine any other existing publisher that would have been the right one for Paradise Earth so I am very blessed.

What do you hope people will learn from your portrayal of the Port Arthur massacre, its effects on individuals and community, the legacy of violence, and the suffering on the physical landscape?

I would hope that a reader might learn that the Port Arthur massacre is in many ways still an open wound – in the lives of individuals within the Tasman Peninsula community and beyond, as well as on the place Port Arthur and its surrounds. As such, the massacre remains an event deserving of our attention, understanding, and compassion. Most of all, I hope that readers might be provoked to ask questions about aspects of the current state of the world and what Port Arthur can still teach us about the reality that hurt people do hurt people and so not only our compassion but our common sense should tell us that to do no harm should be our ever present goal if we don’t want cycles of violence to continue and the past to repeat itself.

Have you found it particularly challenging having factual events and such a notorious figure as a key focus of your novel? How do you find that balance of fact and fiction, particularly with such sensitive subject matter?

Everything in the novel surrounding the gunman and the massacre is based on facts and the real historical events. My characters are the only fictional creations, as well as a couple of locations on Tasman Peninsula: a local cemetery and a fishing spot. Writing about this, or any other real world tragedy, is always going to be an ethically charged process. As an author you must listen most carefully to the voices of those affected, particularly those directly affected by the event. If you do that, it won’t be easy but you will have a constant guide throughout what might otherwise be a perilous journey.

One of the reviews of Omega Park stated: “Despite a cast of memorable characters, the real hero in this debut novel is the setting, a uniquely Queensland environment, but one sadly underexplored in fiction.” The same might be said of Paradise Earth. Why is the strong evocation of “place” such an important aspect of your work, which in some respects, could be seen as a central character?

When I think about it, I did begin Paradise Earth simply with place rather than a story. The time I spent living on Tasman Peninsula as a child affected me deeply and continues to affect me now. There is no other place quite like it. When it came time to write my second novel, I wanted to capture, or at least represent this place, in a work of fiction. What I soon found is that it is impossible to write about Tasman Peninsula without writing about Port Arthur and once you begin writing about Port Arthur, the events of 1996 in particular, this is such a vitally important subject matter that it subsumes any other potential narratives. I know that at least one of the reasons I feel such an affinity with the Peninsula is its unique geology. The coastline is stunningly beautiful and yet this unique beauty is the result of damage: millions of years of wind and wave erosion. This appeals to me as a powerful metaphor of the human psyche, that it is possible our own personal damage can result in a beauty that makes us unique, who we are, if you like. It’s a question of embracing it. I would challenge anyone to spend a significant length of time on Tasman Peninsula and not be affected by it in a profound way. As an author, I feel much obliged that I have a medium to be able to share my deep and lasting impressions with others in what I hope is a meaningful way.

This article is part of our Wild Authors series. It was originally published on Dragonfly.eco.

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Mary Woodbury, a graduate of Purdue University, runs Dragonfly.eco, a site that explores ecology in literature, including works about climate change. She writes fiction under pen name Clara Hume. Her novel Back to the Garden has been discussed in Dissent Magazine, Ethnobiology for the Future: Linking Cultural and Ecological Diversity (University of Arizona Press), and Uncertainty and the Philosophy of Climate Change (Routledge). Mary lives in Nova Scotia and enjoys hiking, writing, and reading.

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Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

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By Rose McAdoo

How does a New York City pastry chef get involved in addressing the climate changes affecting our planet’s most remote locations? Albeit necessary, the “doom and gloom” messaging of climate change can feel overwhelming, leaving us confused about how to interact with our home. I am a fierce believer in using the excitement and attention around cakes to redirect conversation and inspire connection. Through desserts, we can literally consume science and information – and redirect our fears about climate change toward joy and celebration.

After making high-end cakes for luxury events and celebrity wedding clients, I tired of the blinding diamond rings, the over-the-top first birthday parties, and the pretty white cakes with flowers. I realized that while cakes captured the grandness of celebration, unity, and creativity, I craved the telling of larger stories: the international refugee crisis, women’s rights, and the ever-reduced support for environmental protection. I made the heart-wrenching decision to leave Brooklyn and start celebrating those protecting our public lands and wild spaces.

On New Year’s Eve in 2018, our chartered military C-130 landed in Antarctica and I immediately began my work as a sous chef for McMurdo Station, the largest research base on the continent. After-hours, scientists explained their work at public science lectures where their vivacious passion for microscopic diatoms, atmospheric photon counts, the sex lives of prehistoric fish, and satellite sea ice measurements only made sense to me by reformatting their data as cake layers, tiers, and fondant decorations. I saw their science in sugar, and I was enraptured. 

After my seasonal contract ended, I flew 10,000 miles north to Alaska and set up a makeshift art studio in an Antarctic janitor’s log cabin, which I had to myself while he worked on the North Slope. There, I shipped hundreds of dollars of fondant, tools, and cake decorating materials, and spent a full week researching paleontology, microbiology, glaciology, polar operations, and aerospace engineering. After reading scientific blogs, watching educational videos, and digging into Antarctic outreach articles, I began creating the cakes I had originally sketched out on the ice. By reimagining the images and personal stories shared during science teams’ lectures, I was able to make the vast abundance of research taking place at the bottom of the world completely edible. These cakes joyfully captured the attention of a national audience with the support of NPR, Forbes, and the Mystic Seaport Museum. 

But cakes are frivolous. Unnecessary. Easily done without. And, of course, the same arguments have been made about our environment. As political leaders push for greater access to oil, lumber, and profit, I wanted to dig deeper – to use desserts to celebrate the need for, and abundance of, our public lands – to make environmental conservation literally digestible. My friend and fellow pastry chef Rose Lawrence flew north from Los Angeles to meet me in Alaska, and we packed our backpacks and started hiking.

It’s one thing to make desserts in a kitchen or a restaurant. While I had doubts whether it would work, I felt my edible art would have greater impact if it was crafted on the glaciers and in the forests that were being affected by climate change – using the earth as an ingredient. With a combined 100 pounds of butter, sugar, flour, heavy cream, eggs, tools, and fresh local sourdough starter strapped to our backs, we spent a week trekking into the wilds of Alaska to film the creation of our desserts in their “natural environments” – aiming to merge pastry arts and climate change, and using video to bring people around the world on this visual journey with us. We stopped to forage along the way: wild salmonberries, fireweed blossoms, watermelon berries, pineapple weed, and late autumn blueberries littered the bright red tundra.

Butane canister ablaze, we simmered three colorful jams and whisked together an herbal pastry cream, using everything we had foraged along the way. We infused sugar with wildflowers and fried brioche under the thick canopy of America’s northernmost temperate rainforest. Hot donuts burst open with the diversity of flora among the ferns and accumulated biomass.

Following our brilliant 23-year-old female glacier guide, Jordan Campbell, I ignited my JetBoil, cooked sugar, and made hard candy atop Matanuska Glacier to demonstrate the valley’s crevasse breaking patterns. Transparent raindrop cakes – made with nothing but freshwater glacial runoff and seaweed gel – encased the plants we collected along the way, showing the succession of regrowth after glacial recession.

 We pitched my tent above Exit Glacier in Kenai Fjords National Park, made and buried ice cream in the snow overnight, and whipped egg whites into stiff meringue as a storm rolled in overhead. Our attempt at a flaming Baked Alaska on Harding Icefield was designed to illuminate the state’s wildest forest fires and record high temperatures.

In Denali National Park, I accepted an offer to return to Antarctica. This time it would be a full year – a summer at NASA’s atmospheric research camp and then spending the long, dark winter forklifting hazardous waste shipped from the South Pole and learning rescue techniques on our Search and Rescue team. Again, I started the five-day journey south, this time filling my backpacks with cake decorating supplies and fondant to supplement my “extreme cold weather” gear.

The story we’re told about Antarctica is one of absence, of nothingness, and of harshness. But really, it’s a place full of life: human life, yes, but also bacterial life, wildlife, fungal life, deep sea life, glacial life, and volcanic life. It is a fiercely dynamic place. After nearly 500 days on ice, I felt Antarctica’s influence on my journey as a human, as a creative, as a woman, and as a friend.

I wonder what would happen if we changed Antarctica’s story? What if we ended the narrative of it being an inhospitable place incapable of supporting life? Instead, what if we become the place? We need to stop seeing ourselves as separate from our surroundings, and start considering the ways in which we become entwined with our environment – the crevasses etched into the wrinkles on our faces, our pale skin mirroring the frozen sea ice stretched out before us. On my last day in Antarctica, before entering a world newly ravaged by a global pandemic, I carried a four-tier cake up onto the ridge line and created a sugar self-portrait – my own wind-whipped hair becoming the topographic lines of the Ross Island Peninsula.

If we become the place, then we protect the place. Because in protecting the place, we protect the things that have made us who we are.

Through cakes – by finding unique ways to create art – I’ve learned nearly everything I know. As I create, I learn about places and about the threats to those places. I learn how interconnected we are as a human species. I learn how we are tied to our planet. I learn about the way glaciers form, move, and retreat. I learn about endemic and invasive species. I learn about human impact. I learn about Indigenous groups and systemic environmental racism. I learn personal stories. I learn ways to tell these stories through edible art: how to depict the loss of a specific habitat, or the miraculous expansion of a protected area, or the interconnectedness of an environment visually, on cake. I learn who I am: both my responsibility to my planet and my responsibility to encourage others to spark new ways of interacting with our world.

(Top image: Using desserts to document the environment by crafting pastry in the wild backcountry, Harding Icefield, Alaska. Photo by Rose Lawrence.)

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Rose McAdoo is a visual artist using cake to raise awareness around global issues. Her unique edible art centers around environmental protection and leads her to make cakes with remote populations in the world’s most extreme environments. By making sweets with Kenyan tribespeople and Congolese porters, on glaciers across Alaska, with scientists in Antarctica, and behind bars with inmates at LA County State Prison and NYC’s Rikers Correctional Facility, Rose makes big ideas literally digestible. Her work has been featured by NPR, Forbes, and Saveur, and her recent Antarctic short We Become the Place can be viewed at WhiskMeAwayCakes.com.

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Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

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