26 Anthony Nanson on oral storytelling and its fundamental connection to ecology

In his home in Stroud, oral storyteller and author Anthony Nanson chats about story and the current polycrises. We hear about the three essential ingredients for narrative story: progression of events in time, characters embodied, the imagery of place. Anthony talks of the vulnerability of storytelling, and yet its limitless possibility too. He talks of the Bath Storytelling Circle and storytelling workshops for midwifes under pressure in the NHS. Through enchantment, story creates intent and imagination that counter the problems of deterministic thinking. He says, “Kindness towards other people will be essential to address the crises.”

Anthony’s books include Storytelling and Ecology, and his novel Deep Time.

He recommends Lindsey Clarke’s Green Man Dreaming, and Kim Stanley Robinson’s Ministry of the Future. His hero is Edward Garnett, publisher’s reader in the early 1900s. His action: try meditation. 

Anthony’s website: http://www.anthonynanson.co.uk/ 

His publishing house, Awen: https://www.awenpublications.co.uk/ 

See also Fire Springs Storytellers at: http://www.firesprings.org.uk/index.html

My new book will be supporting this podcast, and will be published in March 2027 by Unbreaking/5m. It’s called "Bamboo and Butterfly: Transformation and Story for Climate and Nature Recovery."

Transcript

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SPEAKER_02 0:06

Pleasure to be here with Anthony Lanson in Stroud on one of the sharp hills of the town. Anthony's one of our foremost storytellers and analysts of story and author and publisher as well. So thank you for inviting us in today, Anthony, to your home. And we're going to talk around story and ecology and the kind of current challenges that we face. So let's start with you just telling us a little bit about yourself, if you could. That would be nice. And your art and craft of story and in all its kind of ranges would be good to hear about as well.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

So my working life is very complicated. As you said, I'm an oral storyteller and a writer, and um uh and I publish a small press called Arwen. And uh and I and I I also teach at a university. So every week is different, and it is very much juggling the different balls uh that are in play. Um there is there is a commonality of of story in all this work, and and I bring to that my concern about nature and ecology uh and also spirituality, which I think is fundamentally connected to the ecological challenge.

SPEAKER_02 1:29

So in in exploring this this idea of story, how how would you talk about what it is that's that's different from other forms of word use? Um, if I can kind of put it broadly in that sense. I mean, uh we have language, but it's it's almost certain that we had story as well from a very early point of human evolution and cultural development. Um we still have it.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

So I I'd single out three ingredients that differentiate narrative, story from other kinds of language use. So one is the sense of a progression of events in time. Yeah. Um second is uh the the sense of characters who are embodied within the imagined world of the story. This is something that Ursilla De Guin talks about in one of her essays. Uh she says that in a story you have embodied characters or imagined to be embodied, whereas in an essay you normally don't. And then the third thing is a setting, that the that the events and the characters, whatever's happening, is located in some kind of a physical setting. That is an environment.

SPEAKER_02 2:42

Yeah. Yes. That's a lovely way to put it. So you get the imagery of the place, um, and you get the the this this arc of change, which I think is really interesting. That the audience then sees or hears what do they see and hear when they hear that sort of story. They hear a bit of themselves, I guess, their own lives, um, how our lives are you know, dramatic changes and surprises and things happen to us that we didn't know would happen. But our only rehearsal for that is probably story, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 3:17

Well, yes, they may they may do. So I think there's a tension between um there's this awful word relatability, which my my students like to use, and I I I I think it's ungrammatical, but that the sense of uh the reader or the listener to a story or the viewer recognizing something that is familiar in their own life and their own circumstances, and uh but on the other hand, there's the unfamiliar, there's the challenge of the unfamiliar and the stretching of the imagination. So I I I I I I feel at the moment there is a bit of a a pressure towards the the familiar and to a catering for this desire that people may have for that which they recognize as familiar. Um but if you can push the imagination with things that are completely unfamiliar, um, so for example, a story that's set in the prehistoric past and things are completely different, or or in a very different culture from the culture that somebody is used to, then, then the mind is challenged to possibly think about other possibilities.

SPEAKER_02 4:28

And if we were to leap from from the the uh I mean most stories tightly defined, it's like looking through a kind of one-inch frame. It's kind of, you know, there's a border to the story. We know what's happening within it. Um, and yet the the the big challenges and crises that we face in the world, just climate and nature, if we take two of them, let alone politics and social inequality and all sorts of other things, um, they're gonna need forms of imagination that we perhaps haven't applied before, because we're gonna need to be bright and clever and capable of bringing people together in ways that we hadn't thought we could. So imagination is a key part, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 5:11

Well, it's when it's starting to happen, the engaging with the the the large-scale challenge of uh what I would call global environmental crisis, uh, because I I have a concern about climate crisis being discussed as if that's the whole of the crisis. And actually it's it is a crisis, but it's only actually one aspect of the overall ecological crisis, which I think there's many other aspects as well. Um but uh but but these things are beginning to be addressed in fiction, and I would draw attention to a fantastic novel, The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, who um among uh contemporary science fiction writers, he's almost been um uh campaigning single-handedly, at least since the passing of Ursula Deguin, uh, to present utopian possibilities in the science fiction future, as opposed to the what's become normative cyberpunk dystopian future of you know, with the global city and everybody uh struggling and and and and killing each other. And in the Ministry for the Future, he he envisages um a specialist United Nations agency that has a that has a um uh a commitment to to focusing on the pathways forward into the future. And he actually shows in in a very large-scale narrative that involves the whole world and several decades of time, he actually shows the turning of the corner and and how that might happen towards uh beginning to bring down the you know the parts per million of carbon dioxide.

SPEAKER_02 6:50

Yes. Um that's that that's very kind of revealing that um it's very easy to talk about the bad stuff. I mean, there is a lot of it, and it's kind of tempting as well because you know, when you've seen a another clip of glaciers melting, or another analysis of ocean currents changing, or the heat being taken up in the ocean, or whatever, you know, 10 or 20 kind of major things that relate to climate. Um, it's almost tempting to talk of that, and yet it strikes me that that often leads to a kind of slump of shoulders and a kind of increase of anxiety and people's agency taken away from them as opposed to being given to them or created for them, and that kind of imagination of what a good future looks like. Yeah, yeah. Maybe that's part of the work that Story does. Is that kind of what you're thinking?

SPEAKER_00 7:41

Well, it could do, and it needs two more. So um I uh a recent very recent piece of work of mine is uh a chapter for uh a forthcoming book called Apocalyptic Ecolinguistics. It's an academic book. And uh my chapter is called The Education of Desire in Apocalyptic Fiction. And I've my my my jump-off point for this is really to almost to reverse the meaning of apocalyptic fiction. So uh that that in in the science fiction world, apocalyptic fiction usually means uh, you know, a catastrophic scenario and um uh but the the Canadian critic Northrop Frye, he uh pointed out the way that the word apocalyptic means uncovering, and and and he talks about an uh apocalyptic desire and and the idea of he associates the word apocalyptic with the desire for that which is not yet. Yes. So he gives it a positive spin. What what what what do you desire rather than what do you fear? Yes. So I I by basically redefining the phrase apocalyptic fiction using Northrop Fry's um theorizing, um, I've then explored uh the possibilities of utopian or what some people are now calling fruitopian fiction. Um looking at the examples that exist, such as the work of Kim Stanley Robinson, but also um uh considering what kinds of uh qualities uh uh might be included in such work, and with with a with regard to this idea of the education of desire. Because one of the things I feel quite strongly about stories, uh so stories in whether it's oral storytelling or whether it's in in fiction or film, is that uh if you start trying to use stories instrumentally to persuade people to think or act in a particular way, then the story becomes propaganda and it and it and it ceases to be uh to be art. So I I've I've written about the idea of um uh uh telling stories, writing stories in a way that involves a structure of space in which there is a there are patterns of desire and to engage with people's desire. What do people actually want? You know, people don't want to be in a situation where they're killing each other to struggle for survive. What they want is is is is is love and beauty and to live in the beautiful place and to have security and to do meaningful work and so forth. And so how to bring those kinds of things into fiction in a way that is still compelling and not a sort of boring, kind of static picture of utopia.

SPEAKER_02 10:38

Yes, exactly. Um very nicely put. Uh I I loved your book on storytelling and ecology. Um so I wondered if we could just kind of talk about that for a little bit. Um uh hopeful as well. So I think that kind of relates to what you're saying about the um uh the the desire for something for something. Okay. I mean, if if if if we talk about the crises and say our challenge is to remove the bad stuff, well, we still haven't created a kind of vision or a desire for what good looks like. Yeah. We've just said good looks like not any more bad. Yeah. And that's not really, it's gonna be difficult to get people to rally together around that sort of thing. Yes. We then have to kind of create a completely different set of storytelling and narrative and words and song and music and whatever it is, whatever form that this comes out, um, to create something that makes that kind of imagination work. It's interesting with children, people often say, uh, well, maybe adults say to children, uh, you're just imagining things as a kind of put-down, you know. And it's kind of like, oh, really? Well, that's gonna stop children being imaginative if we if we kind of crush imagination by saying you're making it up, but actually, that's what we've got to do about the future. We've got to make it up. Yes. Um uh, and that's that's the starting point. Could go in lots of different directions, but coming to storytelling and ecology, there was a a lovely moment in your book, um, a striking moment with a nine-year-old boy hearing about trees. You're talking about on location in a Cotswold pasture, such as the land around Stroud that we can see here. Perhaps it was kind of very local. You can tell us about that. Um, and he says something very revealing uh when when you've talked and then he comes back at you. Perhaps you could just kind of tell us a little bit about it then.

SPEAKER_00 12:38

Yeah, so the situation um was that my wife, Kirstie Hart Sergeus, and I had been asked to do a story walk in Shortwood, which is a wood pasture owned by the National Trust. And uh so there um the main trees in this wood pasture are beech trees. There are 300 or old beech trees in there. Gorgeous. And uh so one of the stories that I told during this gig was uh the life cycle of the beech tree. So it was so it was a scientific life cycle story, um, and you know, starting with a beech mass, yeah, and then going all the way through to the the the death of the beech tree. And and I I referred to the beech tree as she, um uh, which may not be technically correct, but uh personhood. I mean it gives it person, uh personhood, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah, exactly. But um, and so that's and there there was quite a bit of emphasis on the on the flowers and the and the reproductive process of the tree um when it got to that stage of its life cycle. And uh and I and I and I did speak of the the desires of the tree, so the uh the urge to grow as a seedling, to to grow up and to become tall, and and then you know the exciting feeling of the of the flowers forming and and then and then shaking the beech mast onto the ground and so forth. And and so that that I was personifying the beech tree uh in the in the way that I used the language, even though the actual content of the story was was all scientifically correct, to the best of my knowledge. And at the end, this the the boy that you mentioned he said uh what you're talking about the tree as it as if it's alive.

SPEAKER_02 14:31

It strikes me that the question of desire and intent and agency kind of come together in a in a space there, that uh the that um it's it's future-looking, it's a different future which might be hopeful, um, but it's also suggesting, I think, uh take taking up your last point there, that there may be multiple paths ahead. So in in talking about story and telling story, we're not saying you've got to do this one thing. We might be saying there are lots of options, and I really want you to choose. I want you to see the world in a way that allows you to choose and your agency to be expressed because you may not even know that it's it's possible. Yeah. You know, people who are anxious about the future may not realize that they have a role to play in it. So that's a start, often a starting point. Yes, but so it strikes me as kind of key, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_00 15:30

Yes, so so this connects to this idea of structure of space. So although I'm very keen on the idea that the audience, whether it's a reader or a listener, has agency and will find their own response to a story, um nevertheless, the storyteller or the writer um has d has their own agency in in deciding what the story is going to be about and in creating a structure. So it's not like a blank space, so just one might experience in in meditation or therapy, where you just create a space and then see what comes up. It could be anything. The storyteller or the story writer creates a highly structured space that involves various subject matter, various themes, various values, and then but then there is space, there's space within that for the for the audience to find their response.

SPEAKER_02 16:25

That's very nicely put, yeah. Um well, could you just lift the veil a bit on on oral storytelling? So um uh as as we've said, you're author, writer, analyst, teacher, publisher, um, so dealing a lot with um the expertise of written words, uh, but also in talking words to others. So um you've you've engaged a lot um in oral storytelling. So just lift the veil a little bit on that, because I think for for well, we know already a lot of people um uh if asked to speak in front of an audience, will be very anxious about it. Um even with uh you know the functionality of a PowerPoint or all of that kind of stuff that invades our current lives. Um but to stand up with nothing but your body and your words and to talk to an audience in that kind of oral way, that's that's um uh not a skill that many people have developed or used.

SPEAKER_00 17:32

Yeah, yes, there is a there is a vulnerability, yeah. Especially if you're standing up in front of a large audience, um, it's a little bit different in a more uh contained situation. Um so I to give kind of two examples of two different situations, uh uh which are actually connected. So I I set in 1999 I set up a storytelling circle which met in a pub in Bath, met every month. And uh I ran it for three years, but it's actually still going. Um it's somebody else, uh uh my friend David Metcalf has been running it for most of the time it's existed. Um, and and that's uh all comers situation. Uh they now meet in the library at the top of the Raven pub in Bath. And uh anyone can come, anyone can tell a story. You don't have to tell a story. They're sitting in a circle, more or less. So it is uh a relatively safe situation. Uh and uh I've witnessed there, and in some other situations, many people tell a story in public for the first time. And and and and there is a kind of a dynamic where they start off, they're kind of shaking and nervous, and then and then and then they sort of realise halfway through that it's kind of okay and they can do it. And that and there is and there is an empowerment. And I and I remember my own experience of that, which was it wasn't actually a storytelling circle, it was a it was a a kind of folk acoustic night in a pub, it was mainly music. But I I persuaded the compar to let me tell a story, and and I had exactly that experience of the shaking of the first half and then the empowerment. Um now there was uh a woman, a midwife, who was in the storytelling circle in Bath right from the beginning. She left Bath, carried on being a midwife, and she contacted me quite recently uh that in the hospital where she worked, the midwives, they had a large number of midwives, um, they were now required to address mothers to be in large numbers as a cost-saving thing. So instead of doing one-to-one work, which they usually did with them, they now had to address large groups of mothers. Yes. And it was extraordinary because these people who were used to working in a kind of life and death situation every day, you know.

SPEAKER_02 19:57

Highly intimate. Yeah. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 20:01

But I mean, they were used to managing childbirth, you know, where obviously the the the life of the baby and the mother is is is is in play, you know. And um, but many of them found this extremely challenging. And so my friend, she's called Sophie, she uh she asked if I would come and do a workshop. And so so I did with about 20, I don't know, it's about 25 or more midwives, uh, which was actually I was quite terrified by that, you know, situation. Um, and the manager of the midwives was there as well, you know. And um, but we did a storytelling workshop and uh with the intention that it would uh equip them with some uh speaking and confidence skills that would help with this this new uh duty that they had to do. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 20:50

Um lovely. Yeah, really nice. And uh do you know that that that helped them have confidence um and to see the possibility of doing this in a way that worked?

SPEAKER_00 21:01

Well, they they told me so some of them told me so at the at the end. I I mean I I haven't had any sort of long-term follow-up of that, but um Well, we can only do what we can do, isn't it? Yeah, and I had a nice conversation with the manager actually, who she not only had to speak to mothers to be, but she also had to give kind of presentations at a higher level at conferences and things, which she found quite nerve-wracking. And she she was very enthusiastic and felt that the sort of work we'd done would would help with that.

SPEAKER_02 21:31

I do like your use of the word vulnerable there, actually, because um, in a sense, story has got to have vulnerability in it, and storytellers themselves standing in front of audiences are vulnerable. We are. Um and yet, of course, so are we all during different phases in our lives. We have no we have no rehearsal from going from small school to big school or big school to our first job or the first death in a family, or the You know, the really all sorts of big transitional moments in our lives. There's no rehearsal for them. I mean, you can hear about how other people have taken them on, and that's one of perhaps one of the strengths of story, is that it gives you risk-free rehearsals. You sit around the fireplace, the hearth, and somebody says, This thing happened in the day, and you learn from it and without having to do it yourself. So you have a bit of a kind of insight into it. But but that vulnerability is is key to the transition moments. But organizations hate that. They don't like vulnerability. They want to project the kind of certainty and a knowledge and a capability to control the world. So if you say to them, well, it would be good to reveal that you didn't know how this was going to go. And after a while it went fine, whatever it was. But it took us a while to get there. They would rather say, we got there. Rather than this kind of you know, difficult moment of falling in a hole and getting out of the hole. Yeah. And and that's what story can help people do, because you can smuggle that in in a sense, to say, I was vulnerable. This was this character in my story was vulnerable, and the audience goes, Oh, fine. So you're saying it's okay to be vulnerable, then are you?

SPEAKER_00 23:19

Yes. I mean, I can give an example of uh not exactly storytelling, but something similar that I observed, um uh, which was the Rome Williams, who was the Archbishop of Canterbury at the time, uh, also a poet, and he actually had a a poetry reading over in Chepstow um with another poet who I think was a Muslim lady, and uh and there was of course there was a huge audience for this poetry, a far bigger audience than you would normally get in a poetry reading. Exactly. And when they'd done the poems, there was then a question and answer, and of course, there were lots of questions for the Archbishop of Canterbury, and I noticed how the way he conducted himself was completely different from what you might expect of a politician or or maybe a business leader, where there would be this kind of projection of the message and of and of of power, and of control. And control, yeah. Um uh because I realized that he was in quite a vulnerable situation, that there would probably be reporters in the room. So if he said anything that was uh too relaxed and you know a headline, yeah, then he could get a he could get a bad headline, and and so so there were these questions that were really going way beyond the scope of poetry, you know. And and and I noticed how he would pause. There would be these long pauses before he would answer the question while he was just thinking. And and then the answers he gave were came across as authentic. And they actually answered the question. You know, he actually responded to the question um in the way that he felt able to, and in a way that uh it struck me was was was true to what he actually thought, um, while at the same time maintaining a level of consciousness that he so that he didn't say anything that would be problematic later.

SPEAKER_02 25:24

How interesting. So sometimes it's the spaces between the words that are important, and the confidence just to sort of be be calm in the face of, you know, sometimes audiences can be quite kind of well individuals can be quite kind of direct or threatening to, if you're you know, in the performance space, um, to get a rise for some reason or to show that they're more important than you. I mean, there's all sorts of motivations or to get a headlock. Well, some teenage boys in the school in particular would be doing that.

SPEAKER_01 25:55

Right, okay.

SPEAKER_02 25:56

Um so maybe the answer is to let a little bit of space come into things as well. Um that's a great story, thank you for that. Um you've written elsewhere that the words have power. Um, and you know, I think we're kind of we're we we're not talking about the expression of personal power or political power, we're talking about their capacity to change things, I think. I think that's what what you meant by that. So I um uh I I think you've you also wrote this thing that Gary Snyder said that um that there's a limit, limitless fabric of possibilities in kind of story and thinking. And he did he did translate the Tao Te Ching in a really interesting way, chapter 33. Um he said the best things in life are not things. Um, and that was a kind of lovely way of saying um, okay, we've sort of understood this stuff uh you know a couple of thousand years when it comes to that particular document, but this limitless possibility um that he talked about, I think that that kind of speaks in an interesting way to stories.

SPEAKER_00 27:00

Yes, um, I I I I I think so, and I think it there's also a parallel with nature um that may be significant. So I I I think one of the uh an ecological value is diversity, so biodiversity and the diversity of species, but I think there's also a kind of diversity of the intricacy of habitats and and qualities of environment as well, so uh a sort of physical diversity as well as the purely species diversity. And I I I advocate the same with stories, that there needs to be a diversity of stories, and that there is there are pressures towards uh uh um uh a narrowing towards certain kinds of stories, and uh so some uh uh advocates of uh story like Christopher Booker, um uh, for example, they they define a good story in a way that really means it's a kind of story that's commercially successful, and and and that kind of story tends also to be one that involves a proactive hero uh who is empowered and solves problems himself or herself. And uh and that the pattern of these kind of stories has a consistency with a neoliberal uh doctrine of the of individualism, and and we all have to be proactive individuals on our own quest that we that we we achieve our desires through our own just our own empowerment, yeah, rather than through some sort of more collaborative approach, or rather than through being vulnerable and disempowered, you know. And and and uh um so so yes, so I celebrate the the diversity of of stories, so many other stories that that actually don't fit that pattern at all. No, and yes, exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 29:05

I think that's a lovely, I've not heard anybody put it that way. I mean, I think that's a very logical way of saying that this thing about diversity is opening up opportunities. I'm gonna kind of put it towards past to the future, but multiple ways of acting, not a narrowing, um, which is a kind of a modernist late-stage capitalism kind of thing, which says, you know, you're either going to get the dream or you're gonna fail. And if you fail, it's your own fault. Yes, you know, with with searching for this deep dream. Um lovely. One other book, Words of Reenchantment. So enchantment strikes me as a kind of another lovely way of thinking about the impact that that we may want to have on ourselves by acting in the world, by sitting under a tree, or looking at the view, or just kind of hearing the bird song. But we also may be seeking to create that enchantment through words and story too. Because working both ways, your kind of your specialness of place as well as the kind of words we have about it. Yeah, enchantment strikes me, or re-enchantment is an important part of this, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 30:19

It is, it's it's an interesting word. And um the word enchantment can be used in quite a wide sense uh uh by some writers like Patrick Curry, for example, um, which really means evoking a feeling of wonder, uh, which is good as far as it goes. I I prefer to use the word enchantment in the way that Tolkien used it. And he defines in his marvellous essay on fairy stories, Tolkien defines enchantment as the art by which is wrought imagined wonder. Um and he differentiates it from magic, which is about exercising power uh over over the world too uh uh in in the service of your desire. And um and so that so there's what's implied here is uh uh some uh uh in this imagined wonder is what Tolkien calls a secondary world or a world which is different in some way from the consensus reality in which we we live. So so it this is bringing in the possibility of a spiritual or a supernatural dimension to what's going on. Um and so I like to use the word enchantment with in a way that is open to that possibility. Uh yeah, that that that there is more than the physical than the material.

SPEAKER_02 31:54

And even just knowing that may be enough. I mean, you may not we may not know what it is, or we may have different ideas about it, but but for an audience to know that is to kind of open up opportunities again, open up the space in front of us, if we can put it that way. Which I think is again this critical part of using intent and imagination and desire in a way that maybe cracks open some of these these kind of really big problems that we face. They're going to they're gonna they're gonna fall through the actions of humans or not. Yes. You know, I mean some think not and some are more hopeful, but it's gonna we're gonna bring kind of new thinking and new ways of engaging in order to deal with these things, aren't we?

SPEAKER_00 32:40

I mean, you know, well yeah, so one of the things that I've written about um is um the problem of uh uh uh of uh deterministic thinking, the assumption of a determinism, um, which I mean this is this this goes way back in the into Calvinism, the the sense of a predestined uh fate that people would have. Um but it's its modern manifestation is in scientific materialism and the sense that uh things are what happens in the world is is determined by uh a physical cause and consequence. And this then extends into the realm of biology and then the human realm of sociobiology, that our genes are uh designed, it's a selfish gene that we have Richard Dawkins and and Co. That are designed to make us behave in certain ways that serve our own biological interests. And so if if you if you uh if this is truly so, that there isn't really much hope. And Edward Wilson is a sociobiologist who's who's in some of his writing he desperately tries to find some sort of pathway of hope while at the same time holding on to this sociobiological determinism. And and it and the American writer Wendell Berry has critiqued uh Wilson's efforts with saying it it just doesn't make sense, you know. Uh the that there has to be some kind of catalyst of change that stands outside this this uh uh this chain of determinism. Yes, exactly. And and and and and at the present time also uh we we also have the cybernetic model, which again is a deterministic model. That you know you press the button and and and the process and and and the process happens in a certain way according to a kind of an algorithm, and that the human brain is is is operating in that way. So um that's that that there has to be a way of breaking the loop, the cybernetic loop, um, or the or the genetic evolutionary loop. Or indeed the AI loop. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:57

It's about the whole topic topic. We'll come back to that one day. Uh this idea that you can absorb all the knowledge of the world into some sort of large language model and bring it back. Um, well, we let's not go there today, but uh it's it's flawed in the same way. It's kind of flawed to that kind of determinism, the the the creativity, the intent, the desire, the imagination, the enchantment that all kind of follows from there, doesn't it? Uh slightly problematic because it implies individuals, but uh a heroine or a hero or a community or something that you kind of look towards and you think, oh, that's kind of nice. Um as you said, we don't there's you know, there's a discomfort with saying, you know, it's only heroes or heroines who can actually change the world. We know that's not the case. They're often written about in that way, but but we do look to those who have changed us, don't we?

SPEAKER_00 35:47

Yes, and I think I think that's a different thing from those inspirational um role models or um inspiring people, is a different thing from the the proactive hero in that sort of Hollywood screenwriting model. Um so the person I would uh uh mention is Edward Garnet, who was a publisher's reader um who flourished in the first half of the 20th century. I'm distantly related to him, so he was a cousin of my great-grandfather William Garnet. And uh he uh, although he was a publisher's reader, which sounds quite a humble job, he made it uh quite an empowerful job. He worked for a succession of London publishers, and he discovered, nurtured, and promoted uh two generations of very significant um uh British writers. He also promoted some American writers in the same period, and uh so his proteges include D. H. Lawrence, Joseph Conrad, W. H. Hudson, H. E. Bates, um Edward Thomas. Uh the list goes on. And I think Naomi Hutchison was about the last of his proteges. Right. And um and I I see him as because he was he was also critic, he he wrote reviews and essays. I I see him as a pioneering eco-critic because if you read what he had to say, especially about Conrad and and and Lawrence and Thomas, there is a a feeling for nature. Yeah. Um and uh he the the values that he brought to choosing which writers he wanted to work with and promote involved a recognition of quality for sure. He was very, very concerned about literary quality, but also a responsiveness to life. He he looked for writing that was responsive to life and and had a sense of moral commitment, I think. And in this sense, he was, I think he represented a different lineage in English literature from that of the other kind of modernists, the the um the James Joyce and uh uh Samuel Beckett kind of thing. And I think he actually rejected uh James Joyce.

SPEAKER_02 38:14

Well there may be there may be kind of commercial reasons for thinking that was not right or wrong, but you need to do the right thing. You know, so if he if he if he has a you have to respect a certain kind of way of seeing what what is good and what is right, you know, just to say to kind of if there's life in things, yeah. That's a really nice way of kind of putting it. Yeah. Um a book to recommend. Um so some someone else's book that you would recommend. Um so um I think you've mentioned Kim Stanley Robinson.

SPEAKER_00 38:50

So if I may mention um Lindsay Clark, uh Green Man Dreaming. And Lindsay Clark uh is a novelist, uh, best known for uh his novel Alchemical Wedding. Um this is a collection of essays, uh, which I have to say, I have to admit, I I published myself with my small press Arwen. With Arwen, yeah. And the but the essays were written over quite over many decades. And um the subtitle is Reflections on Imagination, Myth and Memory. And he's someone who's he's very concerned with the crisis of our time. He's in his 80s now, and so he sees the connections between uh ecology, spirituality, um, and and art and imagination. And that probably the the major essay, the the one that's been most influential, is called Imagining Otherwise, and which was originally a lecture that he would give. And in that he uses a Venn diagram of two interlocking circles. And one circle represents the outer world of where where ecology and politics and society takes place, and then the the other circle is the inner world of our own being, and then the overlap um is that's where the imagination resides. And so he he he he says that the imagination is uh a tool that mediates the relationship between the inner world and the outer world.

SPEAKER_02 40:24

Right. So it's kind of uh it it you can imagine it being a sort of, I'm thinking like a light that's just kind of or a kind of sound or some sort of buzzing is is the interaction between those two worlds as as the kind of creative imaginative space.

SPEAKER_00 40:40

Yes, yeah. And and if you and if you imagine that the the shape of um uh um yeah of the overlap of two circles, it it that is the shape that, for example, is used in church art to for uh usually for to to contain images of Jesus or sometimes Mary. Um so it it so it it can be seen as a uh as a as a portal between this world and and the divine world. Lovely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:10

Fantastic. Um uh we've talked about various of your books, which which we'll put in the show notes as well. Uh top action uh for listeners or viewers. What what would you what do you recommend?

SPEAKER_00 41:24

What I would recommend is is the practice of meditation, which I think does connect to some of the things that we've talked about, some of these ideas of space and consciousness in story and in speaking and in language. And uh so it's a practice that I've only taken up in the last eight years or so. I wish I'd taken it up much earlier. And it does, it's it has informed my more recent writing, including storytelling and ecology. And um and uh I think it it is it it's it's it meditation is a practice that takes you to that catalyst of escaping the deterministic loop because uh in meditation you you are giving attention to the space, the space between the thoughts. The thoughts are kind of like words, aren't they? So so um and when you find a space then uh where the thoughts stop, even if it's only briefly, then there's the possibility of something new, uh uh you know, and an alternative thought rather than the determined predetermined thought coming. And also, um uh my meditation mentor very much emphasizes the opening of the heart. So the moving the meditation into the heart space and uh allowing the opening of the heart, which brings compassion and love. So, so then so you bring them all together, then in your actions in the world, and even just in speaking, there is there's the space for the new thought, the better thought, that the new words to speak, but also the open-heartedness that brings compassion into the situation and and hence the possibility of kindness, which I which I would say is absolutely essential in the grappling with the polycrisis that we now face, that there must be kindness towards other human beings and towards the other creatures in the world. Um uh uh I I don't think that we can uh uh grapple with the extent of the crisis and the and all the competition and conflicts that it entails without uh a deep kindness.

SPEAKER_02 43:41

Yeah, I completely agree. Anthony Lanson, thank you very much indeed. It's been a great pleasure, lovely to chat to you today. Um thank you so much indeed. You're very welcome. Thank you.