Issues
← Back to all issuesGranta 153: Second Nature
Autumn 2020
‘Never has there been a greater need for writers who can communicate about the environment in such clear, immediate and powerful ways, who can envisage the past as well as the future.
The knowledge is already out there. We just have to listen. The contributors to this issue all have a deep understanding of how nature works. Some are scientists; others, environmental journalists exploring the latest thinking about ecosystems and how to repair them; or poets, novelists and activists examining our responses to the current crisis. The stories in this issue will, I hope, be both enlightening and empowering, galvanising us to bring about change.’
Isabella Tree, guest-editor
Cover photograph: Flight paths of starlings, from Ornithographies © Xavi Bou
From this Issue
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Shifting Baselines
Callum Roberts
‘Younger generations accept as normal a world that seems tainted and degraded to older people.’
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Holding Up the Sky
Rod Mason & Charles Massy
‘Fire, wind, rain. We’re gonna meet all them three one day, all together, fire, wind and rain, all together one day very soon if we don’t do something about what’s happened and happening.’
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Third Eclogue of the Vegetable Garden
John Kinsella
‘What you don’t know set / against all you want to know’
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Symbiotic Rootscapes
Merlin Sheldrake
‘Symbiosis – the intimate association formed between different species – is a fundamental feature of life and enables new biological possibilities. Mycorrhizal fungi are some of the more striking examples.’
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Water Is Never Lonely
Judith D. Schwartz
‘This water isn’t irredeemably lost, after all. It has merely been waiting for companionship.’
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Survivors
Adam Weymouth
‘Salmon are the ultimate survivor. They’ve survived ice ages and cataclysms. But are they going to survive humans? It’s dubious, isn’t it?’
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Creep
Caoilinn Hughes
‘She hadn’t been skiing since her master’s in Iceland, back when glaciers had some heft to them, though slackened and fast-diminishing as the legs of a retired cyclist.’
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The Secret Loves of Flowers
Dino J. Martins
‘The flirtations of insects and plants are furtive, hidden and often so brief that if you literally blink you might miss what exactly is going on.’
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Of the Forest
Manari Ushigua & Zoë Tryon
‘We Indigenous peoples know how nature works, how water, mountains, trees function and relate to each other, how stars in space are connected with the earth.’
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Vultures
Samanth Subramanian
‘The death of the vulture is also the death of how we cope with death itself.’
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Oh Latitudo
Amy Leach
‘The supervolcano has a supersecret underneath the surface, magma and hot mushy crystals.’
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The Wolf at the Door
Cal Flyn
‘Wolves brook no bureaucracy. They do not believe in borders. It has been years since we have come face to face with apex predators in our own country.’
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The Dragon’s Den
Tim Flannery
‘Just imagine the Australian inland with herds of rhino-sized diprotodon, as well as other gigantic marsupials, being preyed on by marsupial lions and Komodo dragons.’
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The Possibility of an Emperor
Patrick Barkham
‘I had always been told that the purple emperor was rare because old woods were rare.’
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Aliens and Us
Ken Thompson
‘Japanese knotweed is a terrific late-season source of nectar for both bees and hoverflies, but that’s not much of a headline, is it?’
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The High House
Jessie Greengrass
‘All those who might have lived instead of us are gone, or they are starving, while we stay on here at the high house, pulling potatoes from soft earth.’
