We’re just over a month away from the nation’s largest literature conference: the Association of Writers and Writing Programs’ annual conference and bookfair, April 8-10. AWP 2010 will be held this year in Denver, at the Colorado Convention Center, and you’ll be able to find Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments there, as well.
Join us Thursday evening, April 8, from 8 to 9:30 p.m. for a joint reading held at the Tivoli at Auraria Campus (Adirondacks Room). Facilitated by Hawk & Handsaw editor Kathryn Miles and Terrain.org editor Simmons Buntin, the reading features Patrick Burns, Alison Hawthorne Deming, Scott Elliott, James Engelhardt, Suzanne Frischkorn, Andrew Gottlieb, Luisa Igloria, John T. Price, Ben Quick, Suzanne Roberts, Jeffrey Thomson, and Arianne Zwartjes.
From Terrain.org’s Issue No. 8 (Autumn 2000) comes one of my favorite Scott Edward Anderson poems. And that’s saying something, considering how many times he has graced our pages. You may read this poem and a couple others — plus find links to newer work — at http://www.terrain.org/poetry/8/anderson.htm:
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Day of the Earth, Night of the Locusts
by Scott Edward Anderson
Owlspent, our days are numbered,
we count them in their passing
with eyes closed, and night comes
easily to those who sleep
with blinded eyes wide open.
And double-talk is all we get
from those whose hands hold fate.
In the larkspur
at the grove’s end,
pagan by rite,
we suss the folly of symbolism
and awaken
to the owl’s haunting.
Eyespeak, our gods implore us
to look beyond our smugness.
And there, we find
our temples
are burdened by wreckage
and our own misdeeding.
Do we good justice by our actions:
Uneducated stewards, electable
guardians of a lackluster paradise.
The apples bruise to the grasses,
blades fat as a night-sweat.
The others have little say,
our own descent is a cant—
The question is:
Can we be faithful stewards
when there is no bounty?
Editor’s Note: Over the next year or so, Brian Awehali, cross-posting at www.BrianAwehali.com, will share his adventures as he investigates green planning and sustainable development efforts in Taiwan and China, pausing along the way for as many marvelous things as possible. A writer, designer, and editor of LOUDCANARY, Brian will check in periodically from Taiwan (where he posts his first report, below), Chengdu, Dongguan, and, luck holding, his yurt-to-yurt horseback travels in Mongolia. We hope you enjoy, and look forward to, these posts as much as Terrain.org does.
Part 1: Unamerican Activities
By Brian Awehali
Chushan (lowlands) tea farm and traffic safety mirror
We arrived in Hong Kong early in the morning, en route to Taipei to visit my partner F.’s family for Chinese New Year, and to work on a WWOOF-affiliated farm for two weeks. After that: mainland China for 6+ months, where I hope to learn (and write) as much as I can about the realities and propaganda of green development in the world’s most populous country.
Our landing was stomach-vanishingly rough. During the worst of it, I looked over and saw a stone-faced woman next to me with a jade pendant necklace that was hovering straight out from her body instead of resting on her neck. I suppose flight is for the birds and insects, and that most of us take it far too much for granted, rather than as the miraculous (if ecologically catastrophic) thing it really is.
After touching down in Taipei we took a bus and high speed bullet train to Chushan (or Zhushan; the Romanization varies), a farming town of about 30,000 in Nantou, central Taiwan. We’re staying at my partner’s mother’s family home, the center of what used to be a large farm, but is now just seven or eight homes arranged around a courtyard.
I didn’t sleep on the flight, so when we finally arrived, I was dead on my feet, and went to bed almost immediately, smelling fire under simmering bamboo soup, and many other things I couldn’t identify, and that my nose may well never have experienced before.
It’s worth mentioning that since taking a (highly recommended) perfuming workshop in San Francisco several weeks ago, my sense of smell has been in hyperdrive. On the plane, every foot, every lotion, and every other less-appetizing thing there was to smell crawled up into my sinuses and made a home. In the Chushan countryside, the smells are better. From my bed, I smelled well-seasoned Taiwanese sausages (rice wine, garlic, Chinese cinnamon powder, and soy sauce paste) curing in the next room, along with glutinous rice and daikon cakes that are fed to the gods at New Year’s, but then eaten by mortals once the gods have had their fill. It was explained to me that the gods eat only the cake’s essence, which works out well for everyone, I suppose.
Temple and tree together in Chushan as the Year of the Tiger begins
During New Year’s celebrations and worship, a ubiquitous ritual involves burning “joss paper,” or “ghost money,” so that it may reach ancestors and the gods in the afterlife. It was explained to me by an uncle that some Taiwanese environmentalists are opposed to this practice because it creates so much air pollution and because it contributes to deforestation. Apparently some people have started to burn virtual money for their ancestors, setting a computer up near the family shrine and extending the reach of computers into the spirit world. (I hope the IT professionals in the afterlife have more effective ways of combating identity theft!)
"Ghost money" offered to the river god on bridges at New Year's
After sleeping for 14 hours, I awoke to an eager rooster crowing well before dawn, and decided to walk into town, about 20 minutes away. I took a shoulder-less road flanked on one side by an open mountain spring-fed culvert, sniffing at the freshly-disturbed earth from various gardens, and drawing in moist air infused with about four parts plant life to one part exhaust. It’s more pleasant than it sounds. Then again, I also used to really love the smell of gasoline.
Roadside spring in Chushan
As I walked I saw several trucks with water barrels and long-nosed suction pumps pull over along the road, drivers climbing directly from cab to bed to extract some of this water, and was later told that people travel from other places for this mountain spring water, because it makes the best tea. (All drinking water is first boiled here, though the water quality is quite good, and I should note that the water for tea is extracted a bit closer to its source than the picture above might lead y0u to believe; the people I saw were farmers, getting water for their crops). Lush vegetation rioted happily in family gardens on all sides: banana trees, corn, plots of sweet potatoes, and more lettuce than I expected, given the seeming lack of lettuce in the Taiwanese diet.
I do not speak Chinese–yet, so my chances of communicating with anyone in a smaller town like Chushan are quite poor. F.’s grandmother and grandfather speak only Taiwanese, and everyone else in the family speaks both Chinese and Taiwanese. I keep making all manner of small mistakes relating to my cultural ignorance, then struggle to understand what I’m being told. For example: my first meal with the family, I put my chopsticks down in my bowl to rest, so that they were pointing upward. This is a no-no; chopsticks are to lay flat when not in use, and are only placed downward in a bowl when offering food to the gods, as if one is making it easier for them to eat. I felt stupid and sad to have made a disrespectful blunder, but, of course, I had no way of knowing about this custom. As an American, I marvel somewhat at the complexity and reverence displayed for the gods here. I have come to believe increasingly in an animistic world, where everything is alive and interconnected. Not only does this jibe with my knowledge of nature and quantum physics, but I also have this sense that the forces of materialism, monotheism and scientific ascendency have diminished meaning and magic from a great number of important and vital things.
One of Chushan's several earth god temples. This one, like many other temples in the area, has recently been renovated and expanded.
But it’s one thing to believe such a thing in an abstract intellectual way, and quite another to experience a culture where none of this is an abstraction, and where there are gods for everything, who must be respected and paid attention to. Offerings are made to the earth god, and it was explained to me that every region has its own earth god. The temple for the earth god of Chushan is just several hundred yards down the road, and the patriarch of the family, now over 90 years old and mostly deaf, walks down to pay his respects every morning.
Several miles into my early morning walk, the foggy countryside gave way abruptly to cityscape. There’s very little separation between the natural and man-made landscape in Taiwan. At 7am, the streets of the city were an organized bedlam, with pedestrians and people on scooters navigating what seemed to me, especially at first, like impossibly limited space. Many, if not most people in Chushan ride scooters — not just adults or boys. Grandmothers, fathers with daughters, mothers with three kids, mothers with two kids and large potentially explosive propane tanks nestled between their legs — everyone. (F’s nonagenarian hard-of-hearing grandfather rides his into town several times a week!)
Cars, scooters and pedestrians vying for space in downtown Chushan, Nantou, Taiwan
About half of those on scooters wear what appear to be surgical face masks. I say appear because that’s what I thought they were at first. Such masks were ubiquitous at the Hong Kong and Taipei airports, covering the mouths and noses of all food service workers and most administrative staff.
We were even given a “flu kit” as we left the secured area of Taipei Airport. It was surprisingly elegant: a bright red package containing a well-constructed face mask with cloth strings, some pleasant-smelling soap, and a packet of disinfectant tissues. F.’s was plaid and relatively tasteful. Mine had a tesselated pattern of hearts and American flags. Someone later explained to me that the people on scooters wear these not for flu-prevention, but in order not to breathe the noxious levels of exhaust they’re exposed to, and my brief walk through town convinced me of the wisdom of this. My sense of smell may be peculiarly heightened right now, but the haze in the air and sooty grime on any available surface corroborated what my nose was telling me.
Rapid industrialization and the attendant ills of air pollution are a significant problem for Taiwan. The tea grown here, expensive and prized as among the best in the world, must be grown at increasingly higher elevations in part because the air quality is too poor at lower elevations, and ruins the tea’s flavor.
I confess, with some shame, that I had a momentary impulse to judge the Taiwanese for ruining the air of their beautiful island, but then quickly reminded myself that my flight here, on its own, probably contributed more air pollution and carbon than any one of these scooterists could possibly produce in a year, and that the average American contributes far more to pollution and global warming than does the average person in Taiwan. Additionally, Taiwan has made great (and typically rapid) strides to address its pollution and emissions problems.
Translation: "No regrets for reducing energy consumption, let's join together to reduce carbon emissions, we love the earth and so will reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions, everyone should get together to fight warming" The Sioulin Elementary School, built in 1954, serves pupils who live along Dinglin Road which goes up into the mountains to the east of Chushan. (photo D. Cowhig)
The soot and exhaust are offset, at least in part, by gardens and vegetation in almost every available patch, growing right up to the edge of the road, nestled next to busy intersections, in narrow alleyways, in planters on rooftops, and in tiny front yards. Such gardens are commonplace here in Chushan, and they make me wonder why more people, especially in the fertile climate of Northern California, my adopted home for the past seven years, are not doing the same.
F. and common roadside garden in downtown Chushan
Downtown Chushan riverside garden
Later in the day, we took a walk up a beautiful path behind the family place, through bamboo forests and banana mangroves, and past several striated hills that used to be used for growing tea, but are now abandoned and brown. When I first met F.’s mother, she was most animated when showing me the proper preparation of tea. When she explained to me that it was to be steeped for absolutely no more than 25 seconds, she spoke as if personally aggrieved by the ongoing widespread murder of tea by ignorant fools. So: Steep for 25 seconds, using only half a teaspoon of tea, then pour out the water so that you may re-use the leaves and enjoy several more (small) cups! If you do not follow these directions, if you let the leaves linger in sitting water or steep for too long, they will lose their essence and you will have ruined a potentially exquisite experience.
Next post: My day learning tea history, technique, ecology and etiquette from a local tea enthusiast.
Formosa Betrayed (“New Movie Ties Taiwan’s Messy Politics to Bay Area Murder”)
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Brian Awehali, a former editor at Britannica.com, founded and edited the North American magazine, LiP: Informed Revolt, as well as an anthology of its collected best, Tipping the Sacred Cow (AK Press). In 2010, he will be traveling through Taiwan, China, Mongolia and Guatemala. In China, he will be writing mostly about sustainable development and emerging “green” technologies. He is a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, and is most committed to the advance of The Marvelous. When not blogging for Terrain.org, he curates LOUDCANARY: One interconnected journey through everything and nothing.
Death eventually comes knocking, but before it does, a person might as well pass the time writing poetry. Bill Holm implies as much in “Ars Poetica,” one of his many until-now-unpublished poems included in The Chain Letter of the Soul, printed and posthumously distributed by Milkweed Editions in October 2009 after Holm passed away unexpectedly earlier that year from pneumonia.
Along with new work by Holm, The Chain Letter of the Soul recounts treasures from some of his previous works, The Dead Get By With Everything, Boxelder Bug Variations, and Playing the Black Piano. The book itself is named after a phrase in an application Holm made to the McKnight Foundation to support the time he spent crafting his final batch of new poems: “I have written and intend to continue until someone among you takes up the happy work of keeping the chain letter of the soul moving along into whatever future will come.”
Serendipitous and poignant, many of the poems track Holm’s own emotional negotiation of life, death, and infinity. Through images steeped in landscape, people, wildlife, technology, and music, he questions why death is difficult to accept, what mundane day-to-day moments can teach, and what it means to be human. Take the outset of one of the last poems he wrote, “I Began the Day in My Sixty-Fifth Year,” in which Holm says he asks “himself questions that nobody else has bothered to ask.” By sharing these intimate exchanges with readers, Holm seems to have understood – even if intuitively – how his creativity would continue to resonate much farther than his own abruptly ended life.
The Chain Letter of the Soul is an appropriate entry point for those unfamiliar with Holm, and it offers touching closure for readers already acquainted with his work. The book holds nearly 100 previously unreleased poems, well worth the investment, even though the end of the “Storm Coming to Seattle” section seemed a bit rushed. Please consider The Chain Letter of the Soul as highly recommended and especially so while enjoyed aloud with Mozart or Beethoven, preferably performed on piano, playing in the background.
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Claudia Bromanlives in Ashland, Wisconsin. Her poetry has appeared in Writing Nature: An Annual of Fine Nature Writing and Drawing.
I first saw Padma Viswanathan’s novel, The Toss of a Lemon, on a shelf in Borders and was immediately taken by the title. It’s an interesting phrase. One I’d never heard, yet it sounds like something someone could have said a hundred times, a hundred someones. The phrase refers to a character in her novel, a Brahmin astrologer who has someone toss a lemon out the window the very moment each of his children are born. It’s the precision of the moment that helps him create their astrological charts, which will not only interpret each of his children’s futures, but those of his and his wife.
After reading the novel, I found Padma on Facebook and made a strange request. I asked her if she’d sign my hard bound copy of her book if I sent it to her and promised to pay for the return postage. Not only did she agree (graciously), she also paid for the return postage. And this after the book had just been reviewed in the New York Times, a time I imagine friends and admirers must come out of the woodwork. Again, she couldn’t have been more approachable.
When we were looking for someone to interview for our next issue, she was the first author who came to mind. She’s kind, well-traveled, thoughtful: a great writer at the (relative) beginning of what will surely be a long and illustrious career. I approached her again, and again she accepted.
We talked, as we always do at Terrain.org, about place. This led to further questions about novels vs. plays, about Brahmins, about Elizabeth Bishop, and about the role of failure in art.
I can’t wait for it to come out, but in the meantime–if you’d like to sample some of Padma’s work–here’s a short story she wrote a couple of years ago that won the Boston Review’s annual short story contest. The work, “Transitory Cities,” has a very different tone from her novel. It’s more experimental, more a work of magical realism–though many authors might reject this term. Either way, it’s a great story and should more than get you warmed up for the interview.
Terrain.org Nonfiction Editor Joshua Foster on Writing the Personal Essay
A professor from my alma mater recently invited me back to campus to discuss with his freshmen composition class the writing of personal essays. A few weeks prior, it came to my attention that the college had used an essay I’d written while there, a short two-pager called “Second Day of Sun,” as a student example in their comp textbook. A flattering and overwhelming predicament, realizing that all incoming freshmen would be reading (or, better said, assigned to read) my work.
The problem came in teaching the writing principles of personal essaying. I’d written “Second Day of Sun” inspired by a gut urge while walking to campus one melty winter day, punching out the text while at work in the basement of the Engineering building. The whole process, start to finish, took maybe two hours. I handed it in a few days later, and then sent it off to Idaho Magazine a week after that. Idaho Magazine accepted it [read essay], and the essay became my first official publication. If anything, the composition seemed like a lucky accident.
The answer came in a metaphor. Idaho in January is a frigid place—the farm fields buried in snow, the naked trees spindled and bare. On a clear morning, one can see for miles across the glistening expanse. And so I asked the students to imagine being alone, outside, on those barren fields. Perhaps they have on snowshoes, or cross-country skis. Perhaps they are barefoot. Darkness falls. Out across the plain a light can be seen. They fumble in that direction, trudging and plodding toward the beacon. Finally, they arrive. There sits a house with no front door, and a fire can be seen inside, roaring and lapping in the stone hearth. What would one do in such a situation? Easy: go in through the open door and get near the heat.
Perhaps personal writing is not that different. Any writer will attest that the blank page is looming and lonely, a tundra to track through and traverse. And that is what happens until a light is found. And then the writer needs only to do two things—at least in their initial efforts of composition—to pen the personal essay. Burst through that open door and face the flames.
Though I didn’t understand those principles while writing “Second Day of Sun,” I do now. Spare the reader the meandering quest of arriving at a subject. Instead, guide them through the opening and convey to them the emotional core, the heat of the piece, and keep them there until the only solution is to step away or combust.
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Joshua Foster lives and works on his family’s potato and grain farm in southeastern Idaho. He recently earned an MFA degree in fiction and nonfiction writing from the University of Arizona. He serves as the nonfiction editor for Terrain.org: A Journal for the Built & Natural Environments.
Award-winning travel entrepreneurs share practices to preserve authenticity of place and local character
Geotourism at Loreto Bay, Baja California Sur, Mexico. Photo by Simmons Buntin.
WASHINGTON (Feb. 4, 2010)—The Second Annual Geotourism Change Summitat National Geographic headquarters showcased travel leaders from around the globe presenting success stories from both major cities to countrysides, all with the mutual purpose of preserving the character of the world’s special places and furthering sustainable travel.
The 200 attendees on Feb. 2 heard inspiring presentations by the winners of the 2009 Geotourism Challenge, sponsored by National Geographic and Ashoka’s Changemakers, as well as speakers discussing advances in geotourism and other new trends in sustainable travel.
Geotourism is defined as tourism that sustains or enhances the geographical character of a place — its environment, culture, aesthetics, heritage and the well-being of its residents.
“The forces of globalization are making places look just like the next one. The Summit honored those who have not bowed to mass tourism — in fact, they are offering the most authentic experiences possible,” said Jonathan Tourtellot, director of National Geographic’s Center for Sustainable Destinations.
Award-winners ranged from river.India.com, the world’s first outfitter on the challenging Siang River, that has trained locals to be river guides, to Evergreen Brick Works in Toronto, which took an abandoned brick factory and has turned it into a vital part of the city, with farmer’s markets, summer camps and an ice skating rink.
Tourtellot noted that despite terrorist threats, a shaky world economy and the increasing inconvenience of air travel, people are still traveling, and the number will likely top 1 billion international trips within very few years.
Other news from the Geotourism Summit:
Economist James Gilmore,coauthor ofthe booksAuthenticity: What Customers Really Wantand The Experience Economy, provided the keynote address. He said that the world is moving out of the “service economy” into what he calls an “experience economy” – a desire by consumers for authenticity and memorability. His message to travel entrepreneurs at the Summit: consumers now desire a combination of the “four E’s”: entertainment, education, esthetic and escapism.
National Geographic unveiled its Geotourism Impact Map Concept, to be integrated into the Center for Sustainable Destinations website, and a testament to the proliferation of geotourism around the world. It will become a huge aggregate for geotourism practices and existing maps, available to both businesses and travelers. It will also identify regions where geotourism activities are unknown and need help.
Details of the 2010 Geotourism Challenge were announced. The theme will be “Places on the Edge: Saving Coastal Destinations.” Tourtellot noted the world’s coast lines, more than any other geographical feature, are under pressure from tourism.
Vanessa Healey, vice president, global brand marketing, InterContinental Hotel Group, was a member of the panel devoted to destination stewardship strategies. She shared how the hotel group has fully embraced geotourism, including training their 60,000 employees in how to help visitors “go local.” Information cards on local activities and history are often left at night on guests’ pillows. Other comments from panelists: “We must move from Joe Tourist to Joe Citizen; “follow the locals’ lead”; “travel is a life value.”
Geotourism Challenge-winner Alex Khajan, CEO of Nature Air in Costa Rica, conveyed the passion of Summit attendees to preserve the world’s special places. “We are rebels by nature and want to be catalysts for change,” he said to the group when accepting his award.
The Geotourism Challenge is a global competition of tourism-related projects that promote natural and cultural heritage while improving the well-being of the local people. The 10 finalists honored at the Summit are the best of 610 entries from 81 countries,
“The Geotourism Change Summit offers an opportunity to showcase the true nature of tourism. These 10 innovators demonstrate not only that tourism needs a major rethinking, but also that these pioneers have already done it and are now leading initiatives to help alleviate poverty, conserve natural and cultural assets, and provide enriching experiences for visitors. If we want to know what the future of travel looks like, this is it,” said Charlie Brown, executive director of Ashoka’s Changemakers.
The three Geotourism Challenge winners — Nature Air (Costa Rica), PEPY (Cambodia), and Wikiloc Community Maps (Spain) — were selected by online voting. Each received a $5,000 award at the Summit. The winners:
Nature Air, the 100 percent carbon-neutral airline in Costa Rica, offsets 100 percent of its greenhouse gas emissions to encourage reforestation of tropical forests in Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula.
PEPY (“Protect the Earth, Protect Yourself”) is Cambodia’s Educational Volunteer Tourism Program, providing adventure bike tours and on-site volunteer projects, like building rainwater collection units.
Wikiloc Community Maps in Girona, Spain, created by a software engineer with a passion for travel, is built on maps, photos and video submitted to offer honest impressions about destinations.
The Multilateral Investment Fund (FOMIN) joined forces with the National Geographic Society and Ashoka through the Changemakers Geotourism Challenge 2009 “Power of Place” competition. The goal was to capture regional creativity and demand as well as provide co-financing opportunities for small geotourism initiatives in Latin America and the Caribbean that benefit local communities by improving the competitiveness, social use and sustainability of the tourism sector. The FOMIN received 319 proposals from 24 countries, selecting seven projects for co-financing.
About Ashoka’s Changemakers
Changemakers is an initiative of Ashoka, an organization with over three decades of finding, funding and expanding the work of social entrepreneurs across the globe. It is a global online community of action that connects people to share ideas, inspire and mentor each other, and find and support the best ideas in social innovation. The Changemakers online community builds on this history and expands the Ashoka vision by creating an “Everyone a Changemaker” world through networking, relationship-building and the sourcing of funding opportunities. Through its collaborative competitions and open-source process, Changemakers has created one of the world’s most robust laboratories for launching, refining and scaling ideas for solving the world’s most pressing social problems.
About National Geographic
The National Geographic Society is one of the world’s largest nonprofit scientific and educational organizations. Founded in 1888 to “increase and diffuse geographic knowledge,” the Society works to inspire people to care about the planet. It reaches more than 375 million people worldwide each month through its official journal, National Geographic, and other magazines; National Geographic Channel; television documentaries; music; radio; films; books; DVDs; maps; exhibitions; live events; school publishing programs; interactive media; and merchandise. National Geographic has funded more than 9,200 scientific research, conservation and exploration projects and supports an education program promoting geographic literacy. For more information, visit nationalgeographic.com. To learn more about the mission and work of the Center for Sustainable Destinations, visit www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/sustainable/.
About the Multilateral Investment Fund
The Multilateral Investment Fund (FOMIN) is an autonomous fund composed of 38 member countries that is administered by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the main source of multilateral financing for development in Latin America and the Caribbean. Since 1993, the FOMIN has been providing grants, loans and equity investments for innovative projects that promote economic growth and poverty reduction through private sector development, focusing primarily on micro, small and medium enterprises. It is the largest private sector-focused development donor in the region, with an extensive network of over 650 local executing agency partners. Created in 2004, the FOMIN’s sustainable tourism cluster is a group of 27 projects in 19 countries aiming to increase the competitiveness of locally owned micro, small and medium enterprises by mainstreaming sustainability in the tourism sector.
“A Short History of Falling” by Pamela Uschuk, appearing in the current issue (No. 24) of Terrain.org, has been named a “Best of the Web” award recipient by Dzanc Books and will be included in its Best of the Web 2010 anthology.
The selection completes the hat trick for Terrain.org, as we placed fiction in the 2008 edition (“The Split” by Kim Whitehead) and nonfiction in the 2009 edition (“Catching Hell: The Joe Holt Integration Story” by Heather Killelea McEntarfer).
We are delighted to once again place a contribution in the Dzanc Books Best of the Web anthology series!
Update:
Dzanc Books is setting up Dzanc National Workshop Day on March 20, 2010. It has over 30 workshops set up in over 25 cities on that date. Learn more at the Dzanc Day website:
In the world of environmental literature, there are only a handful of steadfast publications — those you know you can turn to for excellent literary work in poetry, nonfiction, and fiction, as well as enticing artwork. They work in part because of the strength of the editing team, in part because of the array of contributors, and in part because they speak to place. Pilgrimage Magazine, a small journal located in Colorado, is one such journal.
“I believe in the power of stories,” says former Pilgrimage editor Peter Anderson, “stories from the world’s great wisdom traditions; stories that help us to know home and place; stories that speak to the social justice issues of our time; stories that invite reflection; stories that can open, heal, and empower us; the kinds of stories that once led poet Robert Bly to describe Pilgrimage as ‘one of the finest journals in America.’”
Anderson’s last move before stepping back from his editing role at Pilgrimage was to assemble Telling it Real: The Best of Pilgrimage Magazine 2003-2008, and as you might imagine the collection sings. (Disclaimer: Terrain.org editor Simmons B. Buntin has an essay in the collection, “Ben’s Bells,” so he’s biased — but if you spend any time at all with this collection, you’ll acknowledge his bias is right on.)
Telling it Real is introduced by Peter Anderson and then divided into four sections: Story, Place, Spirit, and Witness. At first, you might think: Well, where are all the leading environmental writers? There’s no Wendell Berry, Barry Lopez, Terry Tempest Williams, or Alison Hawthorne Deming, for example. The writers mostly represent the American Southwest, and they represent it beautifully. They are, perhaps, lesser-known, and yet their work — like the anthology itself — is strong and image-filled and built on a passion for and sturdy relationship with the natural world. They include Kim Stafford, Rick Kempa, Pamela Uschuk, William Pitt Root, Reyes Garcia, Maria Melendez, William Stimson, and others.
Telling it Real can be difficult to locate — it’s not on Amazon.com, for example. But you can get it right here:
Join Terrain.org editorial board member Alison Hawthorne Deming and other authors at the Friends of the Patagonia Library Writers’ Round-up 2010: Saturday, February 13, 2010 from 10.00 a.m. – 3.30 p.m. at Cady Hall in Patagonia, Arizona.
Scheduled writers include Mark Bahti, Betty Barr, Byrd Baylor, Elizabeth Bernays, Joel Bernstein, J.P.S. Brown, Stephen Cox, Philip Caputo, Alison Hawthorne Deming, Elizabeth Gunn, Lynn Hassler, Juanita Havill, Mike Hayes, Fenton Johnson, Ken Lamberton, Susan Lowell, Gregory McNamee, Tom Miller, Gary Paul Nabhan, Margaret Regan, Richard Shelton, Stephen Strom, and Janet Winans.
Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments explores the nexus between the built and natural environments through two theme-based issues per year. Online since 1997, we publish editorials, poetry, essays, fiction, articles, reviews, interviews, the ARTerrain gallery, the UnSprawl case study, and the new To Know a Place multimedia feature.
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We’re just over a month away from the nation’s largest literature conference: the Association of Writers and Writing Programs’ annual conference and bookfair, April 8-10. AWP 2010 will be held this year in Denver, at the Colorado Convention Center, and you’ll be able to find Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments there, as well.
Themocracy