Authors Electric

Eco-writing is the new buzz-word, an exciting genre for the times we live in when the word 'endangered' seems to turn up in every media article.  But what is it exactly? Field Work - photo Harriet Fraser  'Poet in the Meadow' If you go on the internet and search for a definition it will probably tell you that it's what used to be called ‘nature writing’, ( as in Gilbert White),  except that it has broadened out and now embraces a huge field of ecological, environmental and biological material.  But it isn't just scientific observation, it's a vast body of literature, non-fiction, fiction and poetry, that deals with human engagement with the landscape, flora and fauna of the natural world. It is often very personal, narrating one human being’s relationship with it. Eco-literature is a very popular genre at the moment, (there's even an academic field of Eco-criticism!). An Eco-literature magazine open to submissions The first literature I came ...

January and February are at present providing their annual mix of kaleidoscopic experiences in New Zealand and in this blog, spread over two months because it seemed to be getting out of hand, I'll be bringing some new observations on the topic of a piece I wrote last year: the great Christchurch Earthquake fiasco. But I'm also giving an account of the books I'm reading while we are away. Some of them have chimed in with so many concerns I have at the moment. Perhaps this may make the blog bitty and haphazard.  I hope not: it's meant to hang together. Sorting out a reading programme is important when you go away. You enter a temporary world offering finite, specific, self-contained experience and it seems to me that the reading experience can have boundaries to match it.  Sometimes this works perfectly. We remember some books because of where we read them almost as much as for what's in them. However, sometimes an elephant enters the room and turns it into someth...