Given the globalised and over-polluted times we live in, the climate crisis has inevitably become the ‘background hum that won’t go away’ to contemporary nature writing – as expressed recently by recognised poet Simon Armitage. This has and continues to influence the work of authors who are now having to balance and question their responsibility to record their environmental experiences and the bigger ecological dilemma in their writing.

Mark Cocker, British naturalist and author of books like Crow Country (2007), Claxton: Field Notes from a Small Planet (2015), and Our Place: Can We Save Britain’s Wildlife Before It Is Too Late? (2018), has openly criticised a current tendency in today’s nature writing which he refers to as ‘re-enchantment’:

One of the central concerns of the new literature is the idea of ‘re-enchantment’, a diffuse term that seems to mean whatever the author wishes. What it usually involves is clothing a landscape in fine writing, both the writer’s own and that of other historical figures – Emily Brontë, Edward Thomas and Nan Shepherd are good examples – so that the place is infused with fresh cultural meaning.

Cocker denounces this style of writing as a ‘cape’ covering up the realities of the landscapes that surround us with an overdone pastoral narrative that ultimately distracts the reader from the dire state of the English countryside. Furthermore, he fears that one of the real dangers of nature writing, in its current state, is that it ‘becomes a space for us to talk to ourselves about ourselves, with nature relegated to the background as an attractive green wash.’

On the other hand, some writers are of the opinion that nature writing – rather than echoing the official environmental reports and the news articles on pollution and increasing biodiversity loss – can offer an escape and respite from today’s ecological anxieties. Is it the nature writer’s responsibility to engage with the politics of low-carbon initiatives and the logistics of wildlife and habitat conservation? As author Kathleen Jamie insinuates, there is something urgent and aggressive about a writing infused with the political.

I would like to think of nature writing as a nice little retreat. I don’t want it to be on the frontline. I want routes not to the barricades but to a more thoughtful way, a kinder way – more compassionate to ourselves and other creatures. I’m not an activist.

Author Robert Macfarlane, in a response to Mark Cocker’s article, finds fault with the latter’s instrumentalising view of nature writing that ‘subdues literature to a single end and presupposes a simplistic model of consequence: that Cultural Action A leads to Political Outcome B.’ Macfarlane defends the notion that literature does not need to be an overt expression of activism, but rather that in its appreciation of nature and in relating its human connection, it can provoke or encourage policy change.

Acknowledging our love for the living world does something that a library full of papers on sustainable development and ecosystem services cannot: it engages the imagination as well as the intellect. It inspires belief; and this is essential to the lasting success of any movement. – George Monbiot

Sources:

Simon Armitage: ‘Nature has come back to the centre of poetry’ (The Guardian)

Purple passages make for bad nature writing (The Guardian)

Death of the naturalist: why is the ‘new nature writing’ so tame? (The New Statesman)

Robert Macfarlane: why we need nature writing (The New Statesman)

Kathleen Jamie: ‘Nature writing has been colonised by white men’ (The Guardian)