In a short interview (available on YouTube here), Jessica Woollard from the Marsh Agency discusses her current stable of writers. Seeking a way to describe Robert Macfarlane, Jay Griffiths and Jim Perrin, she goes for "nature writing, for want of a better phrase." Woollard hits upon a problem that many of us analysing such writing, or contributing to the field ourselves, have struggled with of late: what might that better phrase be? "Nature writing" and "nature writers" seem to be terms we're struck with in today's literary critical circles. If a dash of sexiness is needed, we have "the new nature writing" (itself the title of the excellent Granta issue 102, details here). That "new" implies that the long heritage of nature writers (from gentleman naturalists and clerical scholars, to the Romantics, to twentieth century ecologists and enthusiasts) is now joined by a rank of writers responding not only to that heritage, but to today's environmental predicaments. The new nature writers have an acute sense of their moment in history. In addition, they are able to draw on the rich ecological literary heritage (dominated in the critical consciousness, perhaps unfairly, by British and American writers) to develop distinctive ways of writing about the natural world. For Woollard, "it is all about the writing, in this area." It seems that if you're writing about the environment, elegantly and innovatively, with an awareness of the legacy you inherit mixed with a sense of the particular pressures on today's planet, you are a "new nature writer." We'll work on a new literary terminology to better capture this important endeavour.
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