Ambitions for the Future of Climate
Ambitions for the Future of Climate
A TW Panel About Climate Change
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In the wake of this summer’s Canadian wildfires, protesters are descending on Climate Week NYC, which includes today’s United Nations Climate Ambition Summit. Although the spotlight on climate change has gotten a lot brighter in the past several months, the issue has been going on for decades. Three works have come out recently that were all conceived before this summer’s alarming weather but seem even more relevant now. All three artists have some connection to Talking Writing, and I decided that making a collage of their works and interviewing them would be a great way to explore these themes through the lens of aesthetics.
JoeAnn Hart contributed a nonfiction piece, titled “When the Pieces Don’t Seem to Fit,” to Talking Writing in 2017, and her short story collection, Highwire Act and Other Tales of Survival, was just released by Black Lawrence Press earlier this week. Highwire Act contains vignettes about people and animals facing adaptation to the changing ecosystem of Earth in the near future, in what Hart calls “speculative fiction.” She and her husband take in livestock rescues, and she started writing about the relationships between animals, humans, and the environment with her novel Float (Ashland Creek Press, 2013), about plastics in the ocean.
For more information, please visit JoeAnn Hart’s website.
Alice Major has contributed several poems to Talking Writing, including some from her most recent collection, Knife on Snow (Turnstone Press, 2023), for which I wrote music and made a video collage. The collection begins with poems about wildfires—one of which was inspired by the Fort McMurray fire in 2016—and weaves together emotional considerations of climate change with science, mythology, space exploration, and daily life. She has lived in Edmonton, Alberta, since 1981 and served for two years as the city’s poet laureate.
For more information, visit Alice Major’s website.
John Atkinson is a writer, analyst, and musician living in New York City. His career covering renewable energy was catalyzed by the World Trade Center attacks in 2001, which inspired him to work toward ending our dependence on oil. I met John while he was playing in the band Aa (pronounced “Big A Little A”), whom I interviewed for my Weird Music project. He has gone on to release several albums of ambient music on his own and with collaborators. His last three solo albums have all centered around environmental themes, taking field recordings from places that are ecologically and energetically significant. The most recent, Energy Fields (AKP Recordings, 2023) uses field recordings of coal mines, turbines, refineries, and animals from his residency at the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming in 2019.
For more information, visit John Atkinson’s website.
Also check out a bonus episode with the full version of JoeAnn Hart’s short story “Float” with John Atkinson’s Long Harbor, available only to paid Substack subscribers.
Episode Information
Highwire Act and Other Tales of Survival by JoeAnn Hart (Black Lawrence Press, 2023).
“When the Pieces Don’t Seem to Fit” by JoeAnn Hart, Talking Writing, 2017.
Knife on Snow by Alice Major (Turnstone Press, 2023).
“Zinnia Becomes First Flower to Bloom on Space Station” by Alice Major, Talking Writing, 2020.
“Video: Path Integral” by Alice Major, Jean Wolff, and John Vogel, Talking Writing, 2021.
Energy Fields by John Atkinson (AKP, 2023).
Long Harbor by John Atkinson (Self-released, 2022).
“Tens of thousands march to kick off climate summit, demanding end to warming-causing fossil fuels” by Seth Borenstein, The Associated Press, September 18, 2023.
Photo credit: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s GOES-West Satellite views smoke from Canadian wildfires over the United States. © NASA Goddard, Rob Gutro; public domain.
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