Issues
← Back to all issuesGranta 153: Second Nature
Autumn 2020
‘Never has there been a greater need for writers who can communicate about the environment in such clear, immediate and powerful ways, who can envisage the past as well as the future.
The knowledge is already out there. We just have to listen. The contributors to this issue all have a deep understanding of how nature works. Some are scientists; others, environmental journalists exploring the latest thinking about ecosystems and how to repair them; or poets, novelists and activists examining our responses to the current crisis. The stories in this issue will, I hope, be both enlightening and empowering, galvanising us to bring about change.’
Isabella Tree, guest-editor
Cover photograph: Flight paths of starlings, from Ornithographies © Xavi Bou
From this Issue
Essays & Memoir|Granta 153
Essays & Memoir|Granta 153
Introduction
Isabella Tree
‘Never has there been a greater need for writers who can communicate about the environment in such clear, immediate and powerful ways, who can envisage the past as well as the future.’
Essays & Memoir|Granta 153![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Essays & Memoir|Granta 153![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Shifting Baselines
Callum Roberts
‘Younger generations accept as normal a world that seems tainted and degraded to older people.’
Essays & Memoir|Granta 153
Essays & Memoir|Granta 153
The Ard, the Ant and the Anthropocene
Charles Massy
‘I had somehow compartmentalised my mind: nature and my farm landscape stood either side of a deep chasm.’
Essays & Memoir|Granta 153![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Essays & Memoir|Granta 153![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Holding Up the Sky
Rod Mason & Charles Massy
‘Fire, wind, rain. We’re gonna meet all them three one day, all together, fire, wind and rain, all together one day very soon if we don’t do something about what’s happened and happening.’
Poetry|Granta 153![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Poetry|Granta 153![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Third Eclogue of the Vegetable Garden
John Kinsella
‘What you don’t know set / against all you want to know’
Art & Photography|Granta 153![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Art & Photography|Granta 153![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Symbiotic Rootscapes
Merlin Sheldrake
‘Symbiosis – the intimate association formed between different species – is a fundamental feature of life and enables new biological possibilities. Mycorrhizal fungi are some of the more striking examples.’
Essays & Memoir|Granta 153![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Essays & Memoir|Granta 153![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Water Is Never Lonely
Judith D. Schwartz
‘This water isn’t irredeemably lost, after all. It has merely been waiting for companionship.’
Essays & Memoir|Granta 153![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Essays & Memoir|Granta 153![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Survivors
Adam Weymouth
‘Salmon are the ultimate survivor. They’ve survived ice ages and cataclysms. But are they going to survive humans? It’s dubious, isn’t it?’
Fiction|Granta 153![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Fiction|Granta 153![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Creep
Caoilinn Hughes
‘She hadn’t been skiing since her master’s in Iceland, back when glaciers had some heft to them, though slackened and fast-diminishing as the legs of a retired cyclist.’
Essays & Memoir|Granta 153![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Essays & Memoir|Granta 153![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
The Secret Loves of Flowers
Dino J. Martins
‘The flirtations of insects and plants are furtive, hidden and often so brief that if you literally blink you might miss what exactly is going on.’
Essays & Memoir|Granta 153![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Essays & Memoir|Granta 153![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Of the Forest
Manari Ushigua & Zoë Tryon
‘We Indigenous peoples know how nature works, how water, mountains, trees function and relate to each other, how stars in space are connected with the earth.’
Essays & Memoir|Granta 153![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Essays & Memoir|Granta 153![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Vultures
Samanth Subramanian
‘The death of the vulture is also the death of how we cope with death itself.’
Essays & Memoir|Granta 153![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Essays & Memoir|Granta 153![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Oh Latitudo
Amy Leach
‘The supervolcano has a supersecret underneath the surface, magma and hot mushy crystals.’
Art & Photography|Granta 153
Art & Photography|Granta 153
Ornithographies
Xavi Bou & Tim Dee
‘No bird could ever be seen by our naked eye as Bou shows it, but every flying bird actually moves in that way.’
Essays & Memoir|Granta 153![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Essays & Memoir|Granta 153![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
The Wolf at the Door
Cal Flyn
‘Wolves brook no bureaucracy. They do not believe in borders. It has been years since we have come face to face with apex predators in our own country.’
Essays & Memoir|Granta 153
Essays & Memoir|Granta 153
Prepare to Be Kind
Rebecca Priestley
‘Looking forward to 2100, it’s a choice between another thirty centimetres of sea level rise if we do everything we can to cut our carbon emissions, and up to two metres of sea level rise if we don’t.’
Essays & Memoir|Granta 153![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Essays & Memoir|Granta 153![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
The Dragon’s Den
Tim Flannery
‘Just imagine the Australian inland with herds of rhino-sized diprotodon, as well as other gigantic marsupials, being preyed on by marsupial lions and Komodo dragons.’
Poetry|Granta 153![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Essays & Memoir|Granta 153![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Essays & Memoir|Granta 153![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
The Possibility of an Emperor
Patrick Barkham
‘I had always been told that the purple emperor was rare because old woods were rare.’
Essays & Memoir|Granta 153![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Essays & Memoir|Granta 153![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Aliens and Us
Ken Thompson
‘Japanese knotweed is a terrific late-season source of nectar for both bees and hoverflies, but that’s not much of a headline, is it?’
Fiction|Granta 153![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Fiction|Granta 153![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
The High House
Jessie Greengrass
‘All those who might have lived instead of us are gone, or they are starving, while we stay on here at the high house, pulling potatoes from soft earth.’
Essays & Memoir|Granta 153
Essays & Memoir|Granta 153
Upirngasaq (Arctic Spring)
Sheila Watt-Cloutier
‘Everyone benefits from a frozen Arctic. The future of the Arctic environment, and the Inuit it supports, is inextricably tied to the future of the planet.’
The Online Edition
Essays & Memoir|The Online Edition
Death Takes the Lagoon
Ariel Saramandi
Ariel Saramandi on the sinking of the MV Wakashio off the coast of Mauritius.
Essays & Memoir|The Online Edition
The Lye of the Land
Derek Gow
‘One in seven British species is now threatened with extinction. Many more, from the grey wolf to the blue stag beetle, are already long gone.’
Essays & Memoir|The Online Edition
Garden Time: The Palm Forest of W.S. Merwin
Robert Becker
‘This place, where the temperature drops noticeably as you walk into it from the road, survived William Stanley Merwin as equal parts oasis, stage set and work of art.’