The New Nature Writing

Abstract

In the last decade there has been a proliferation of landscape writing in Britain and Ireland, often referred to as ‘The New Nature Writing’. Rooted in the work of an older generation of environment–focused authors and activists, this new form is both stylistically innovative and mindful of ecology and conservation practice. The New Nature Writing: Rethinking the Literature of Place connects these two generations to show that the contemporary energy around the cultures of landscape and place is the outcome of a long–standing relationship between environmentalism and the arts. Drawing on original interviews with authors, archival research, and scholarly work in the fields of literary geographies, ecocriticism and archipelagic criticism, the book covers the work of such writers as Robert Macfarlane, Richard Mabey, Tim Robinson and Alice Oswald. Examining the ways in which these authors have engaged with a wide range of different environments, from the edgelands to island spaces, Jos Smith reveals how they recreate a resourceful and dynamic sense of localism in rebellion against the homogenizing growth of ‘clone town Britain’.

Psychogeography: Walking through strategy, nature and narrative

“…The inspirations are wide-ranging, as detailed in reviews by Cocker (2015), Graham Huggan (2016), Robert Macfarlane (2013), Joe Moran (2014), Kate Oakley et al (2018), Jos Smith (2017) and Phil Smith (2017, 2020; and as Cecile Oak, 2017). Yet the genre is easily recognized, usually written in first person, and unlike those producing ‘“expert knowledges” about natural phenomena’ (Castree, 2005: xvii) in geography and allied disciplines.…”

Deep Time Visible

“…Jos Smith notes insightfully that one of the qualities of the New Nature Writing is the way in which, in the face of environmental uncertainty, it simultaneously encompasses both "the intensely local and […] the globally interconnected". 25 The additional information Gange offers -that these specific "drowned mountains" once "stretched from what is now Norway to the present day United States" -draws disparate parts of the globe together conceptually in a way that troubles ideas of nationhood, a perception that may prove increasingly valuable as climate breakdown results in ever greater displacement of human populations. 26 If the visibility of deep time is one notable "island effect", then another is the apparent instability of linear time in these sites, such that the past remains a powerfully tangible presence.…”

Brexitland’s dark ecologies: new British landscape writing

“…Robert Macfarlane's melancholia is not the same as these reactionary accounts, and there is an impetus in the generations since Richard Mabey's crucial books of the 1970s to reconfigure the return to nature not as an anti-modern or counter-modern gesture but rather to rethink place as an 'open-ended and experimental process' that intertwines the local with the cosmopolitan global. 34 Nevertheless, in the era of accelerating climate catastrophe, it would be wrong to discard the sense that permeates all this writing of the trauma that the delocalizing, 'extraterritorial' modernity has wrought. These writers variously argue, in the words of Bruno Latour's recent manifesto statement, that we need to get back 'down to Earth', to reconnect in new ways with the planet.…”