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today’s song
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I am slow to say: here is a list of nature writing for the same reason I struggle with categorising something as “food writing”.
Nature writing, like food writing, can include the restorative, meditative style of writing that helps us feel like we’re sinking into that woodland, that wetland, that garden - it can feel like a beautiful escape; or it can bring us back to reality with a shudder. It can be a sobering and upsetting and infuriating essay detailing the ways in which these very habitats have been relentlessly, and sometimes irreversibly, degraded over a very short space of time.
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The best writing is easily a mélange of so many different ‘genres’ and explorations that it feels reductive to categorise as just one. It also can be an imposition on a writer who doesn’t see themselves within the category you’re choosing to slot them into, who naturally doesn’t want to be pigeon-holed. We tolerate these things for marketing and publishing and industry reasons, but it can be disappointing to see our peers repeating behaviours we’re tired of, even if it’s well-intentioned.
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This is a constant tension that I feel in my obsessive list-making; I’m always conscious that anything I list could just as easily fit happily under a variety of other headings, or none at all. I find myself wondering if it’s helpful to keep indulging this impulse to categorise.
It’s why I specify here: I’m calling this Nature Writing for ease of list-making, and ease of access for others who might be rooting around for their favourite ‘genres’, but I am conscious of the fact that we, none of us, are so easily or happily labelled; that our writing often, usually, contains multitudes.
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Still, there is always a competing interest within me to document and share things that excite me, and to celebrate wonderful writing and the opportunity and access to it, and it usually wins out, so here we find ourselves again. In my Google doc, I have the below listed under: about nature; about exploring new corners of the world.
some nature writing
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nature magazines / publications
Channel Magazine: an Irish journal of environmental writing
Hive: a new journal of Irish nature poetry
I am adding another section here because, in going through the above doc, I came across another section that I had very succinctly and helpfully entitled:
all the other ones that can’t be easily pigeonholed, and are nourishing and meditative, thought-provoking, interesting and worthwhile to dip in and out of.
I don’t really know how else to describe it, really. These are ones that would probably be categorised under ‘personal writing’ (?). They are meditations and reflections and essays dealing with life and memory and grief and creating and existing; the sort of writing where you realise you feel looser after having read it because it’s brought you closer to remembering that there are so many of us trying to make sense of what it means to be here. And, if we can’t make sense of it, we’re writing beautifully in the attempt.
And, again, all of the above ‘nature’ ones could probably fit within the below, too; as could the below probably fit within the nature category:
glimmers (formerly, Scéal)
Other lists I’ve cobbled together in a fruitless bid to impose order on the chaos:
The second half of this post is just one long list that I keep intending to separate out in some pleasing way.
And, this is a list in its own way: a playlist I’ve been updating for over a year each time I include songs in published pieces etc.
Thank you for reading 🌼
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