The Language of Trees Katie Holten

  When I feel overwhelmed by what we’ve caused—biodiversity loss, climate change, ecocide, hunger, migration, pandemics, poverty, war—I find solace in the beauty of the living world, especially in trees. Trees are truthful. They fill me with joy. The simplicity and quiet wonder of trees, whether alone on a city footpath or together in a […]

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SPRINGWATCH AS GREEK DRAMAverity healey

  People need drama, they need wildness, and they need nature. And the BBC’s Springwatch provides it all. Set over an hour an evening four nights a week for three weeks in May in the UK, Springwatch transmits live from a variety of locations where wildlife scientists give scientific insight into the soap opera-like goings on […]

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Excerpt from The European EelSteve Ely

20 degrees north, 62 west. The outer rise of the Puerto Rico Trench, a hundred miles north of Anguilla. New Moon, 1% visible. Kraken darkness, lit only by octopus phosphorescence and the bright detonations of ejaculating eels. They’ve been travelling in tandem for five days now, through frittering flames of fertilised ova and the disarticulate, […]

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Barn Owls in SuffolkSeán Hewitt

I watch them for a long while, the pair rising and courting the field in daylight, the strange geometry of their faces funneling the air,   and everything – their whiteness, their sense of having slipped through from another world, their focus on the hunt –   in the end it all comes down to […]

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Dandelions on the CommonCraig Smith

  There are new dandelions on the Common. The spindly stalks of these coin-sized supernova can barely lift their heads from the ground, today being November and the season for dandelions long being over. One weekend, three years back, the boy and I questioned how the solar rays of dandelion petals switched modes to become […]

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Shades of EmergencyDaisy Hildyard

  What does emergency feel like? If you’re in Henan, China, perhaps you felt a goldfish nibbling your foot as you waded along the pavement during the summer floods. If you’re in Madrid or Chennai or Sydney, maybe it was stifling heat, the smell of rotting trash, dead insects crisping on the windowsill. If you’re […]

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Q&A with Margaret AtwoodToby Litt

  This interview took place on Thursday 24th March 2022. The wonderful Margaret Atwood was in London for an event at the Royal Festival Hall, promoting Burning Questions, her new book of essays and occasional pieces. She spoke with Toby Litt, editor of the Writers Rebel website.   TL: Thank you for talking to us. […]

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Duino – poemPatrick Mackie

  Whether you can get there from here or wherever depends on whether you are there already, on whether you will find that you are already standing amidst the outspread hands of its stones, and their misty grey dawns,  on whether indeed the arcs and folds of that sky really can make all location moot […]

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