NATURE
Jim McCarthy spoke about the influence of nature on his upbringing and career, finding opportunities in it as a boy for the experience of beauty, escape, freedom and adventure. In his career as a forester and in nature conservancy he was able to provide this experience for others, stressing the importance of sense experience before the acquisition of knowledge, and emphasising that spending time in gardens, forests and mountains provides many young people with their first opportunities for self-reliance and co-operation as well as enjoyment. He felt that introducing children to nature at an early age was a health giving response to what’s been referred to as ‘nature deficit disorder’.

CREATIVITY
Norman Bissell spoke about his childhood exploration of the Clyde coast and the teaching of Kenneth White in Glasgow University in the sixties, in which he opened up to his students not only the fields of literature, but philosophy and science, and a new way of looking at and being in the world – sensitive, open and learning, but also primarily creative. This later became an archipelago of geopoetics as a method of sensitive and intelligent perception of the earth and its creative expression which was thriving in different parts of the world. He also felt encouraged by the recent proliferation of new groups interested in similar areas, such as Dark Mountain and New Networks for Nature and thought that we should be willing to network with them.

WELL-BEING
Gordon Peters talked about his work with indigenous peoples, describing his career in social sciences, but saying that his primary interests now are poetry and physics, rejecting the traditional separation of the sciences and arts. He is interested in the concept of well-being as defined by indigenous peoples, not as material prosperity, but as understanding and being comfortable with one’s place in the world. Three insights from these communities which he stressed as being most relevant to our current needs are:

• that the human is part of the environment and not alienated or detached from it
• that categories of being are not fixed but mutable and can mutate into oneness
• a special respect for the environment, and the processes of being and becoming.

NUKA
Andrew Lyon introduced the work of the IFF which explores possible ways forward in a world of increasing complexity and uncertainty and what a society needs to do to live well. He described a holistic community health service initiative among First Nations people in Alaska, with the strap-line ‘healthy relationships = healthy people’. ‘NUKA’ is the sense of what works for this people in this place, and works by integrating western allopathic medical knowledge into the Alaskan world vision rather than imposing external values on it. The Alaskans pointed out that this practice could not simply be transplanted into other communities, as every community would have to create their own ‘nuka’. In the Scottish context, Gordon Peters had already mentioned the concept of ‘duthcas’ (from Joseph Murphy’s book On the Edge) which discusses the link between home, community and individual identity in Scotland and Ireland. Andrew also developed a reference that Gordon had made to the early Karl Marx who had pointed to the metabolic rift that occurred as a result of human separation from the soil by saying that in the Paris Manuscripts of 1844 Marx spoke about alienation from oneself, other people and other species.
The discussion became more wide-ranging after this, as Fiona Byrne-Sutton mentioned the cultural loss in not having the experience of fire in our everyday life, which Steve Pardue backed up by saying that cave paintings of animals came to life in fire light. Nanon McManus added that lack of light and outdoor living was causing illnesses in western countries.

We talked about the disempowering nature of current bureaucratic structures, which leave individuals and small groups without the expectation of being able to help themselves, while burdening those ‘in charge’ with impossible expectations. Scotland’s Chief Medical Officer of Health Sir Harry Burns, with whom Andrew had previously worked closely in Glasgow, was advocating empowerment of individuals and communities to improve well-being, and it was pointed out that encouraging individuals to experience the natural world and be creative in the arts and sciences is one way of achieving that.

We also discussed wisdom circles, where locals formulate their own solutions to dilemmas, expecting central authorities to enable and support their initiatives rather than manage and control them from above. It was suggested that the quality of relationships between people and with the natural environment is crucial to healthy ways of life; healthy relationships mean healthy people; we must make our future or someone else will make it for us.

One example of change in this regard is that the Forestry Commission is now promoting woods for health and learning through creative play. Bill Eddie suggested that the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics is well placed to play a major role in education as a means of addressing the widespread alienation and estrangement from nature (Nature Deficit Disorder or NDD) in Scottish society.

Both the IFF and the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics relished the opportunity to hold discussions in such depth, and we agreed to keep this very valuable connection going with the aim of enriching our conversation by exchanging articles and news of events/activities on each other’s websites, and sharing examples of good practice that nourish life.

http://www.geopoetics.org.uk/2012/01/stravaig-geopoetics-online-journal-issue1

Henry Thoreau was an important forerunner of geopoetics, a man who had a keen perception of the world around him and who wrote about it extensively in his books and journals. He was quite a walker too (unhappy if he didn’t manage four hours a day) and so it is highly appropriate that this first issue of Stravaig (a Scots word meaning to stroll or wander) should be inspired by his work and feature four essays, many poems and images which clearly demonstrate the creative benefits of getting out of the house and going outwards.

We really would like to get the word out there that Stravaig can be read online and you could help to do this by sharing this link with your contacts and friends on e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google+ etc., and by reviewing and blogging about it.

Your thoughts and suggestions on any of the contents of this first issue and ideas for a second issue would be greatly appreciated. These can come to me or be posted on the Stravaig pages of our website

Many thanks to all the contributors, to Jim McCarthy and Elizabeth Rimmer who helped me to edit it, and to Steve Pardue www.differentia.co.uk who did the design.

Our next day event will be a continuation of our discussions with the International Futures Forum at The Boathouse in Aberdour on Saturday 21 April 2012. We will meet there at 10am for a walk along the shore followed by lunch at the Boathouse at 12 noon and discussion at 1.30 pm. The areas for discussion are still to be finalised but are likely to include how creative expression of the earth can enhance health and wellbeing.

This is the time of year to renew your membership of the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics and you can do this by sending a cheque for £10/£5 unwaged payable to the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics to Bill Taylor 7 Wellpark Terrace West, Newport-on-Tay DD6 8HU or online at http://www.geopoetics.org.uk/online-store/. We hope you will!

If you haven’t already done so, take a look at these short films of interesting talks at our Brantwood weekend and at the Edinburgh International Radical Book Fair last year at http://vimeo.com/geopoetics.

Council member Steve Pardue has come up with the intriguing idea of a geopoetics roadshow (attached) to take geopoetics to a place or places where some of our members live, and experience that location through their eyes. The Isle of Mull in mid June would be one possibility. Tell us what you think.

An all day meeting of a committee of the International Institute of Geopoetics will take place in Paris on Wednesday 4 April. Council members who would like to attend should let me know ASAP.

Exhibitions & conference

Routine: Lex Braes drawings and paintings with video work by Allan Kaprow and of Shōji Hamada until 26 February Show Room 170 Suffolk Street New York. The first New York solo show in over ten years of Scottish-born, New York-based artist, Lex Braes: http://www.showroom170.com/Lex2.html

How the Land Lies: Alastair Cook’s recent film, analogue photography and glass work 10-24 February at the Out of the Blue Drill Hall Dalmeny Street Edinburgh.

Friday 10 February at 7 pm Opening Event: Alastair will introduce screenings from Filmpoem at 7.30pm, with readings from poets Colin Will, JL Williams and Jane McKie, accompanied by Italian composer Luca Nasciuti. He will also première Animal Charcoal, the first of 7 Films. This event is free and children are most welcome. http://alastaircook.com

The 13th Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas will take place at the University of Cyprus, Nicosia in July 2012. There will be a workshop on Geopoetic and Mnemotopic Dimensions of Literature since Nietzsche chaired by Martina Kolb.

Members
More authors are joining the Scottish Centre all the time and here is some information about some of them and their websites, blogs and publications:

Alyson Hallett is the author of Six Days in Iceland which contains poetry, photographs and scientific text: http://www.thestonelibrary.com/.  http://www.icelandreview.com/icelandreview/reviews//Unsuspecting_Gem_Six_Days_in_Iceland_0_386117.news.aspx

Laura Hope-Gill is the author of  The Soul Tree: Poems and Photographs of the Southern Appalachians and her website is at http://www.thehealingseed.com/

Christian McEwen is the author of World Enough & Time: On Creativity and Slowing Down which espouses the need to slow down to nourish our creativity: http://www.christianmcewen.com/index.htm  http://www.bauhanpublishing.com/new-titles-2/world-enough-time.  She is providing a course based on her book with artist Jan Kirkpatrick from 28th July-4th August 2012 on the Summer Isles. See http://www.summer-isles.com/creative-courses.asp#Slow.

Tessa Ransford is the author of Not Just Moonshine, new and selected poems based on 4 decades of work: http://www.wisdomfield.com/index.html.
Review See also: http://www.goldpoetrythread.blogspot.com/.

Elizabeth Rimmer is the author of  the poetry collection Wherever We Live Now which is available from Red Squirrel Press. or from her at
http://burnedthumbblog.blogspot.com/.

Anne Scott  is the author of 18 Bookshops from Sandstone Press at http://www.sandstonepress.com/title/18_bookshops/. http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/books/reviews/book_review_18_bookshops_1_1939127

Kenneth White’s latest book is the bilingual poetry collection is Les Archives du littoral from Mercure de France and his website is at http://www.kennethwhite.org.

Amazon gift vouchers for Christmas? Why not try out some of these books? Links to other author and artist members will feature in future mailings.

Members’ pages If you would like a page on our website, send me information about yourself, your interest in geopoetics, examples of your work, links to your website/blog and a photograph. See http://www.geopoetics.org.uk/members-pages/.

Other resources
Here are some links to others who are working in different ways in fields similar to geopoetics:

EarthLines magazine published by Two Ravens Press is seeking submissions of essays, poetry, art: http://www.earthlines.org.uk/About.html and of poems for a new anthology of  ecopoetry : http://www.earthlines.org.uk/News.html.

Ecoartscotland is a new resource focused on art and ecology for artists, curators, critics, commissioners as well as scientists and policy makers. It has useful mailings of happenings worldwide : http://ecoartscotland.net/about/.

Ecoartnetwork is a similar American network: http://www.ecoartnetwork.org/wordpress/ .

New Networks for Nature is a broad alliance of creators (including poets, authors, scientists, film makers, visual artists, environmentalists, musicians and composers) whose work draws strongly on the natural environment. http://www.newnetworksfornature.org.uk/

Elements of a new cartography is member Alistair Duncan’s blog  – a world thinking and sensing forward from the earth – which is particularly strong on phenomenology and perception: http://www.alistairduncan.co.uk/

Romantic Natural History is a survey of relationships between literary works and natural history up to 1859:  http://blogs.dickinson.edu/romnat/

The Centre for Human Ecology is an independent academic institute and network based in Glasgow which stimulates and supports fundamental change towards ecological and social justice through education, action and research, drawing on a holistic, multidisciplinary understanding of environmental and social systems: http://www.che.ac.uk/ . Its Kandinsky in Govan DVDs, conference papers etc. are here: http://www.alastairmcintosh.com/Kandinsky.htm.

Tipping Point is dedicated to energising the creative response to climate change http://www.tippingpoint.org.uk/ and its next event is a gathering of artists, scientists and others in Newcastle from 22-24 February: http://www.tippingpoint.org.uk/tippingpoint-newcastle/ .

The Dark Mountain Project is a cultural movement for an age of global disruption, a growing global network of writers, thinkers, artists, craftspeople and workers with practical skills who have stopped believing in the stories our civilisation tells itself. http://www.dark-mountain.net

This is our first issue of our Online Journal – we are also producing a digital version available to print for those of you who like paper to hold! We are hoping to make this a regular (ish) item so let us know what you think and how we can make Issue 2 just as compelling reading as issue 1 is!

So here are some of the images that await you in Stravaig – for the full story head over to Stravaig Issue 1.

Norman Bissell (Director, Scottish Centre for Geopoetics) and Howard Hull (Director, Brantwood and the Ruskin Foundation) in conversation, discussing connections between John Ruskin’s thought and Geopoetics. Introduced by Bridie Ashrowan.

It was held at the ‘Going Outward’ Geopoetics Weekend at Brantwood (Former Home of John Ruskin), Coniston, Cumbria on 26 & 27 March 2011.

‘Going Outward’ was a two day event about making real connections with the world as the key to understanding and practising geopoetics. The outstanding setting of John Ruskin’s former house overlooking Coniston Water in the Lake District enabled us to explore his response to landscape and his relationship to geopoetics.

View video

On Friday 11 May at 3 pm in Ullapool Village Hall Kenneth White, who has been described as “Scotland’s most original and challenging writer, academic and poet”, gave a poetry reading. Chaired by Kevin MacNeil.

Tickets were £5 for each event and were available from Avril Moyes at the Ceilidh Place Bookshop, Ullapool tel. 01854 612245 or online at books@theceilidhplace.com. Full details of the Festival’s attractive programme can be found at www.ullapoolbookfestival.co.uk.

The text of Kenneth White’s stimulating lecture at the 2006 Edinburgh International Book Festival “Along the High Lines- Figuring out the way towards a world culture’ can be viewed on the Hi-Arts Website.

http://textualities.net/tag/tony-mcmanus/

What do you do when there’s a power cut at the start of your Powerpoint presentation to a large audience in Cullipool Hall on the first morning of the Natural Life on Luing Geopoetics Weekend? If you’re Bill Eddie (not Oddie), ornithologist, botanist and leading member of the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics, you go with the flow (or lack of it) and take your audience outside to look for birds around the village and in Cullipool Bay.

Apart from a greenfinch sitting on the telephone wire outside the Hall there weren’t many birds around that morning but, thanks to the arrival in the Bay of the fishing boat My Tara, Bill was able to point out the differences between black-backed, herring and common gulls and then resume his wide-ranging illustrated talk.

Next morning Rosy Barlow and Zoë Fleming had to be equally flexible at the end of their joint presentation on the flora and fauna of Luing when the heavens opened and hailstones drummed on the Hall’s velux windows just as they were about to take us on a guided walk. They decided to go with the weather and instead took more questions from a discerning audience who marvelled at their beautiful photographs of celandines, tormentils and many other species, and their knowledgeable explanations of how different habitats and land uses produced variations in the island’s flora and fauna.

The showers having cleared, a crowd of us were soon up on the hillside behind the village peering into gullies and kneeling down to examine the rich variety of wildflowers, grasses and mosses which often go unnoticed beneath our feet as we admire the wonderful views or look up at buzzards or crows cruising in ever-changing skies.

In between these talks and walks the 20 visitors, who had come from as far afield as Newport-on-Tay and Newcastle (on Tyne and under Lyme), joined with members of the Luing History Group and those who had kindly provided accommodation to enjoy a marvellous 3 course buffet provided by the Luing Social Committee. As well as sampling the delights of Luing cuisine, this was a great opportunity for visitors and islanders to get to know each other and to create a basis for future networking.

The buffet was followed by a Grand Ceilidh with dancing to the Seil Ceilidh Band interspersed with moving words and music, including traditional Japanese songs, from Fumiko Miller, former Mod gold medallist Hughie McQueen, some Glasgow and Luing poems from my forthcoming collection Slate, Sea and Sky, two great songs about Belnahua and the Isle of Luing from Fiona Cruikshanks and others by Eleanor Carlingford-Reeves. When the band had to leave to catch the last ferry, The Cast, a professional duo who took part in the Weekend, kept the dancing and singing going in splendid fashion with their own songs and traditional tunes.

A request for an additional discussion about geopoetics led to a very lively session involving both islanders and visitors on the Sunday evening before Alastair Fleming’s talk about the future of Luing. Alastair gave a very enlightening personal view of the challenges and opportunities facing the island and outlined the work of the Community Trust in seeking to provide a heritage centre and interpretation panels on Luing.

This second geopoetics weekend on the island was again highly successful thanks to the warm welcome and generous support it received from the people of Luing.

Norman Bissell

FREE EVENTS in CULLIPOOL HALL:

• Friday 4 May at 8.30pm An INFORMAL SOCIAL GATHERING for visitors and islanders to meet each other and discuss the weekend ahead. Please bring your own refreshments and nibbles.

• Saturday 5 May at 10.30am BIRD LIFE ON LUING: an illustrated talk and guided walk by Bill Eddie, ornithologist and botanist.

• Saturday 5 May at 8.00pm GRAND CEILIDH with the Seil Ceilidh Band, Fiona Cruikshanks, Fumiko Miller, poets and ‘Come all ye’ performers. Please bring your own refreshments.

• Sunday 6 May at 11am THE FLORA AND FAUNA OF LUING: an illustrated talk and guided walk by Rosy Barlow and Zoë Fleming, Luing History Group, on the results of the recent survey.

• Sunday 6 May at 7.30pm THE FUTURE OF LUING: an illustrated talk by Alastair Fleming, Chairman, Luing Community Trust, about the work being done to create panels and a heritage centre.

• Monday 7 May at 2pm A GATHERING to share and discuss artwork, poems, prose etc. to include in a pamphlet about Natural Life on Luing. Please bring along your work and ideas.

All of these events are open to all islanders and visitors and will be FREE thanks to funding from Scottish Natural Heritage.