Editorial Stravaig issue 5, 2016
Each issue of Stravaig has its own internal logic. In the case of this issue the invitation that went out was for essays, poems and images in some way related to geopoetics, a very wide remit. As a result, the work that came in was extremely varied in content and for a long time it was difficult to see how it could work together. However, once Jane Verburg, the winning essayist from the Hugh Miller Writing Competition, and Antonia Thomas, the runner-up, had agreed to allow us to publish their entries, it became apparent that their individual creative responses to the geology of Hugh Miller would provide the bedrock that would bookend this issue.
Poems about climate change and particular places also emerged as major themes and the irony is that the renewable energy that is required to combat global warming itself raises conservation issues when wind turbines are proposed in scenic areas. Lisa Macdonald’s essay highlights this dilemma in acute form in the change needed to ensure the survival of communities like Coigach in the Highlands.
It is fitting that this issue of Stravaig should begin to explore the work of Nan Shepherd, particularly her stravaiging in and writing about the Cairngorms, which is only now being recognised as significant 25 years after her death. Fitting also that a majority of the submissions we received and selected are from women writers when the geopoetics ‘canon’ has tended until recently to be dominated by men.
The wide ranging essay by Bill Eddie illuminates what drives the avid ornithologist to try to track down a rare species like the wall creeper and argues passionately that we must reinvigorate a poetic interpretation of the Earth and re-learn how to ‘see’ with all our senses. Indeed, geopoetics is as much, if not more, a sensitive and intelligent way of perceiving the world as it is a world outlook, and this comes through strongly in many of the poems included in this issue and in Hugh Miller’s advice, which Jane Verburg and Antonia Thomas have followed so well, to ‘learn to make a right use of your eyes’.
The use of not just sight but all our senses when we go out into the world in order to express it creatively will form an important part of the Expressing the Earth geopoetics conference to be held on the Isles of Seil, Easdale and Luing, and at Kilmartin Glen in Argyll, in June 2017. The creative work in a variety of forms which emerges from that event will form the basis of the next issue of Stravaig as well as of possible future exhibitions of that work. Invitations to participate in the conference will soon be extended far and wide.
Meanwhile, enjoy issue 5 and do let us know your thoughts about its contents and the new format which Bill Taylor has kindly designed and created for Stravaig.