‘Of Walking In Ice’, Werner Herzog (1974) A diary account of a winter walk
Herzog took from Munich to Paris, on hearing his friend was dying. He believed
the adversity he would face on walking to her would keep her alive. (JB)
‘The Faraway Nearby’, Rebecca Solnit (2013) The title comes from a
phrase Georgia O’Keefe would sign off with on her personal correspondence, when
she moved to the desert. This book traces the journey of the accumulation of
memories versus memory loss, tracing journey’s Solnit makes during a period
when her mother slowly succumbs to Alzheimers. (JB)
A field guide to
getting lost, (2006) and Wanderlust: A History of Walking (2014), Rebecca Solnit, are both
beautifully written, thoughtful and insightful. Another superb book is ‘Savage
Dreams: A Journey into the Landscape Wars of the American West’, where the
first part of the book describes the origins of Yosemite National Park, and the
National Parks system of the US, and the second part considers the nuclear
testing that took place in the Nevada Test Site. Really interesting
explorations of ideas of (what constitutes) ‘emptiness’, ‘wilderness’ and
the complex ideas about rights, assumptions, complexities about who owns the
land, and the tensions that these differing assumptions/ assertions bring. (AT)
'The Unofficial Countryside' by Richard Mabey (1973) introduced
by Ian Sinclair in a great new edition by Little Toller Books. It's a book
about a relationship between person and place(s). It's a focus on the
overlooked and comes from a hugely influential writer who wrote this classic in
1973, the year of my birth. (JC)
The Wild Places Robert MacFarlane, Granta, (2007)
This book is a fragmented journey through specific places in Britain's
landscape, weaving detailed observation of nature, geology, history and memory
together in a poetic way. (I can recommend
reading Chapter 2, 'Island' at dusk.) SB
'Patterned Ground: Entanglements of
Nature and Culture',
Stephan Harrison, Steve Pile & Nigel Thrift (eds), Reaktion Books, (2004) A great reader
comprising short essays that cover subjects as diverse as caves, deserts,
waves, battlefields, airports, pigs and God.
Great to dip into. (SB recommended by Dr Nina Morris)
'The Living Mountain', Nan Shepherd, (1977) “This is a
book about Nan Shepherds relationship with the Cairngorm Mountains in Scotland,
mountains that sit outside her front door and that she has known as long as she
remembers. It’s a travelogue of sorts
where she moves around the mountains opening up aspects of them that allow the
reader to understand the intimacy of the tiny spaces that make up the
Cairngorms as well as their overall vastness.
I love the deliberate focus on the local and the familiar in this book,
and Nan's celebration of the ordinary. I
read it earlier this year and went back to the beginning to read it again.”
(SM) The Living
Mountain, Nan Shepherd.”Shepherd wrote the book in the 1940s, gave
it to Neil Gunn to read, and sent it to one publisher who rejected it. It was
finally published in the 1970s, and it feels so fresh, but has an intimacy
borne from an incredible knowledge of (the insides of) these mountains.
She writes something like ‘I prefer the unpath best’, which says it all.” (AT) (Also JB, LP)
'Sweeney Astray', Seamus Heaney,(1983) This is
Seamus Heaney's translation of a medieval Irish poem called Buile Suibhne. I read this first in 1994 and have returned
to it 4 times since. It tells the story
of a king who following a curse made upon him has to live the rest of his days
as a mad bird like creature, unable to rest in one place. Its set in the north and south of Ireland and
many of the places mentioned in it are close to where I was brought up - part
of the reason I continue to return to the text.
Sweeney portrays the landscape through the eyes of a mad, dispossessed,
bird unable to stay still and always seeking rest...... it’s a peculiar and
great way to view the land.(SM)
'Hollow Land', Eyal Weizman, (2012) A book that
looks at the multiple ways that architecture has been used to hollow out the
land of Palestine, by the ongoing Israeli occupation and how built features
function as weapons and ammunition.
"The landscape and built environment have been transformed into
tools of domination and control".
It talks about the way in which the subterranean spaces as well as the
airspace above Palestine have been colonised leaving a thin layer of land
in-between on which the Palestinians can exist. (SM)
'Atlas of Remote Islands' Judith Schalansky,(2010) This
gorgeous book depicts 50 remote islands from across the world from Iwo Jima to
Tristan da Cunha and from Easter Island to Disappointment Island and was the
winner of the German Arts Foundation prize for the most beautiful book of the
year. On one page are Schalansky's hand
drawn maps and on the other page cryptic stories from the islands. "Rare animals and strange people abound:
marooned slaves and lonely scientists, lost explorers and confused lighthouse
keepers, mutinous sailors and forgotten castaways. Armchair explorers who undertake these
journeys will find themselves in places that exist in reality, but only come to
life in the imagination". (SM)
Landscape and Memory, Simon Sharma (2004) ‘Landscape
and Memory’ is a history book unlike any other. In a series of journeys
through space and time, it examines our relationship with the landscape around
us – rivers, mountains, forests – the impact each of them has had on our
culture and imaginations, and the way in which we, in turn, have shaped them to
answer our needs.(DH)
Satantango - a novel (1985) by László Krasznahorkai and Satantango - a film adaptation (1994) by
Bela Tarr. The plot deals with the collapse of a collective farm near the end
of the communist era. Several people on the farm are eager to leave with the
cash they will receive for closing down the community, it stands as a metaphor
for our wider shared histories of displaced migration from the land. The novel
and film explore the tense relationship held between the landscape and human
lives and modernities endless war with nature, industrialisation and its
forces. (DH)
Kilo, Mika Vainio (2013). Music released by Blast First Petite. An audio CD
shaping ten tracks of a vivid and viscerally affective aesthetic whose themes
of mass, dynamic and tone are succinctly, explicitly reflected in context of
his shipping-themed track titles, and surely implied by its frighteningly
physical presence. The relationship between landscape, sound and human failure.(DH)
I may be some time - Ice and the English Imagination, Francis Spufford (2003). A hugely readable, erudite and scholarly exploration of our obsessions with experiencing extremes, and limits in landscape, with an extended passage on the failures of RF Scott.(LP)
Wilderness Dreams - The call of Scotland's last wild places, Mike Cawthorne (2007) A thoughtful look at Scotland based on personal experiences of the Scottish landscape. (A series of self-contained essays) (LP)
Mount Analogue : A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing, Rene Dumal (1952) (The title kind of says it) (LP)
Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer, (1997) A narrative account of the tragedy on Everest when 8 people died, and looks at the problems of expedition tourism on everest . Very,very readable (a bit of an "on holiday" book). (LP)
Findings - Kathleen Jamie (2005) Eleven perfect nature essays. (JB, LP)
Overlay: Contemporary Art and the
Art of Prehistory,
Lucy R.Lippard, (1983). An insightful book on art practice, landscape and
timelines (NB)
Uncommon Ground: Land Art in Britain 1966-1979, Nicholas Alfrey, Joy Sleeman and Ben Tufnell (2013). Exhibition catalogue. While there are gender questions to be raised, this is a pertinent reminder of UK based artists’ interventions in to the land (NB)
Uncommon Ground: Land Art in Britain 1966-1979, Nicholas Alfrey, Joy Sleeman and Ben Tufnell (2013). Exhibition catalogue. While there are gender questions to be raised, this is a pertinent reminder of UK based artists’ interventions in to the land (NB)
Land Matters: Landscape Photography,
Culture and Identity, Liz Wells (2011). Specific
focus on the medium of photography and land including social, historical,
gender perspectives (NB)
‘Histories’, Herodotus. Written around 450 BC
and considered as the founding work of history in western literature, is a book
I find returning time and time again. Moving beyond the description and utility
of geography, it combines personal histories hearsay and myth in every
description of land that for the moist part was never visited first-hand. Each
individual section (named after the muses) places a series of layers and forms
on the land itself into a landscape that exists in two levels – that of the
real and the imaginary. (MM)
Refuge
– an unnatural history of family and place, Terry
Tempest Williams (1992). Williams is a writer and an activist, and this memoir
is about Utah and the Great Salt Lake – where she interweaves a history of her
family with her activism and the fight against nuclear testing, and the affects
that nuclear testing has had on both the wildlife and the landscape of place,
and her family, and the cancers that have affected her family (AT)
The
Poems of Norman MacCaig (Editor Ewen MacCaig) (2009).
Nobody writes about Sutherland and Assynt like MacCaig. (AT)
The Peat Fire Flame, Folk Tales and Traditions of the Highlands and Islands, Alasdair Alpin MacGregor, The Moray Press, (1937) A book on Scottish Folklore (AG)
The Peat Fire Flame, Folk Tales and Traditions of the Highlands and Islands, Alasdair Alpin MacGregor, The Moray Press, (1937) A book on Scottish Folklore (AG)
The Man Who Walks, Alan Warner (2003) “Cutting
through the romanticism of landscape, this tale paints it black and injects
weirdness” (AG)
The Storyteller, Walter Benjamin (1936) was
suggested by Jim Harold after Alan Grieve’s talk on contemporary storytelling
and landscape. ‘The Storyteller’ essay outlines Benjamin’s belief that the oral
tradition of storytelling was dying out.
Contributors: NB:
Nicky Bird SB: Susan Brind, JB: Jenny Brownrigg, JC: Justin Carter, AG: Alan
Grieve DH: Duncan Higgins, JH: Jim Harold LP: Lesley Punton, SM: Shauna
McMullan MM: Michael Mersinis AT: Amanda Thomson
