creative writing on environmental justice
I’ve been thinking about saltspray roses, rugged and adaptable, clinging to dunes, strengthening coastlines, hardier than their blossoms suggest. I’ve had trouble writing, lately, because I don’t want to expose myself, don’t want to publish anything that I might regret, and yet (for me) writing demands vulnerability. I turn my flaws to the light, hoping . . .
Last night, I dreamt that a campsite I stayed at during a cycle tour was barren, as if there had been a terrible drought. I touched the wall of a house and rubble cascaded down. Then I was walking up a narrow staircase with a man who was escorting me to a job interview with his boss. The staircase wound up and up, getting tighter, until I couldn’t go any further.
A few weeks . . .
The only television shows I cannot bear to watch are nature documentaries. I see them and am reminded that the animals in the titular roles are dying, will be dead before I get to travel and behold them. Their Latin names spoken in gravelly voices are almost obituaries by now.
“There goes Panthera leo, stalking its prey. Too bad it’ll be gone by 2050.” The narrator . . .
Editor’s note: In the submission call for this series, I asked everybody to answer two questions: how has the pandemic affected your creative practice, and how will the world change?
The short answer, Michael, is that I will change nothing and I doubt the world will change. The slightly longer answer is that the world has always been unravelling: . . .
The messages are urgent—create more art now, document your experiences in these times, don’t sweat over if what you’re creating makes sense, the world needs it, you need it. I create art, mostly short fiction, and I have to do it while battling with depression and anxiety. No, I cannot write through my depressive and anxiety episodes. I wait . . .
Nearly a year and a half ago, I applied for a residency. Massey University, paired with the Square Edge Community Arts Centre, has a writer-in-residence every year. I only applied to practice applying for things. I didn’t expect to get it—and I didn’t. The 2019 residency was given to another writer . . . but would I be interested . . .
As the devastation of the pandemic over the coming months pulls into focus, that the deaths from this virus will in a best-case scenario outweigh the total lives lost in the Vietnam War, I am brought into contact with my personal experiences of grief: my father’s death, friends with chronic illnesses, romantic relationships ending, and my feelings of insignificance . . .
I’m in Tasmania, and here, it’s starting to look like we’re beating the virus. Every day, the numbers fall. Yesterday, there were zero new infections.
We closed our borders hard and early. We sent people home; we made rules. We’re in total lockdown – that’s why we’re winning.
The streets are so quiet and empty I feel as though I’ve been transported back to my childhood . . .
Pandemic life.
Resting on my bed dayindayout typingmousingtyping frantic to meet these deadlines—Irish immersion, rushing by like the Shannon in flood—tá mé go maith, cad é an t-am é, dé luain dé máirt dé luain dé máirt dé luain dé máirt dé ceadoin—and meanwhile this mad massive dive into all things wild boar—where did you come from, fine piggy, fine sow? How . . .
“Thank God we have the work,” my godmother and I keep saying to each other, “thank God we have the work, I don’t know what we’d do without the work.” She’s a painter, and I write. We said it last year when my dad, her big brother, died unexpectedly. We’re saying it now.
Everyone copes differently with stress. . . .