Reflections

Like every start to a new academic year, I was hopeful, motivated and keen to learn. I voluntarily opted to choose the ‘Writing and the Environmental Crisis’ module. The first seminar involved trying to define the term ‘environmental crisis’ and according to my notes there was a jargon of words and other phrases such as ‘your voice’, ‘interconnectedness’ and ‘its not all about recycling’. To say the very least, I was very confused, and really wanted a structured definition.

                  As a requirement of the course, we were told to read Timothy Morton’s ‘The Ecological Thought’, to help us understand the wider purpose of this course and to further avoid narrowing it down to ‘polar bears are going to be extinct’. Morton argues that to understand the ecological thought we must realise that we are all interconnected. This idea was introduced in conjunction in with the term ‘mesh’ and my understanding developed from all the texts we have read so far in the course. They are so different to each other from style, format or even language, but one thing they hold in common is how we are interconnected with each other. The authors have all brought this idea of ‘interconnectedness’ whereby the more we know about our environment the more we have to lose. Morton succinctly says  ‘the scope of our problem becomes clearer and clearer and more and more open and outrageous’[1]. The whole concept for me has developed to become a sinister feeling and I felt Jean Sprackland has helped me understand this idea more broadly.

                  Strands by Jean Sprackland, neatly puts how we neglect objects that once served a purpose in our life; from the very moment it is produced till the object is washed into the sea and contains no relevance to the owner anymore.  Everything is worth something and Sprackland extends this notion of how to incorporate the idea that we are all interdependent is a crucial fact to understanding the ecological thought. Morton argues how the word ‘world’ is now just a location, we can no longer pin things down to a certain meaning because we are all connected to each other and have relevance to each other whether we want the responsibility or not.

                  Personally, I think I understand the meaning of ‘ecological thought’ a little bit better and understand how the texts have imparted a new wider significant meaning to our knowledge and perhaps ask crucial questions relevant to our future sustainability.

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[1] Morton, Timothy The Ecological Thought. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2010, p. 33.

Is our love of nature writing bourgeois escapism?

After reading Steven Poole’s article ‘Is our love of nature writing bourgeois escapism? I felt quite defensive about eco-literature regardless of the range of which it has been delivered or the time it was published. Poole makes a bold acclaim of how nature writing is a literary equivalent of ‘nostalgie de la boue’, which when translated means a ‘kind of rustic-fancying inverted snobbery’. 

I don’t disregard that authors and poets can present an idealised version of nature or that humans can be described as faultless or innocent beings. This can be presented in the form of travel writing featured in newspapers or blogs. They portray a scenic landscape of what they ‘see’ and create this vision of sublime for 5 minutes. Subconsciously when we read these texts we know it is not true and when we have finished reading the text we go back to reality. 

Personally I believe that Poole fails to see that these romanticised depictions of the world, could evoke a sense of realisation of what the world could be. The image of an unflawed world in contrast to our reality should technically be the biggest wake up call to mankind. Surely the intention behind travel writing is to escape to this imaginary world, or to seduce the reader or to even promote tourism. Regardless of the purpose, why is it wrong to escape for five minutes and is it really for the middle class?

Poole’s assertion that nature writing is for the bourgeois is a notion that is difficult to contest in regards to eco-poetry. For example the form of found poetry in Dorothy Alexandra’s poem, Final Warning evokes the readers sense of environmental responsibility, but what has to be questioned is the text’s form and presentation. It can certainly be argued that the aesthetic nature of the poem is presented in a pretentious manner. The haphazard and deconstructive formation of the poem visibly signifies the ‘fancy inverted snoberry’ which may only captivate the bourgeois and the academics.

Personally literature, regardless of what form, should be enchanting. However, it is evident that nature writing may be unintentionally or intentionally captivating to a particular set of audience, but nor should it be berated for allowing the reader or the writer to forget their woes.

[1] Poole, Stephen ‘Is our love of nature writing bourgeois escapism?’ The Guardian, 6^th July 2013.