At the very beginning of our first lockdown, I copied a line from US poet Maggie Nelson’s book Bluets and stuck it to my wall. The words are about aiming to be “a student not of longing but of light” . In these oddly boned days, that quote guides me onwards. Now that travel of any form has shape-shifted so vastly – as we’re held so firmly in one place – how might we navigate those delicate paths between longing and reality? Travel, for many of us, has long been a way to keep our creative flames lit. Seeing new places, experiencing unfamiliar things, meeting people different from ourselves: these are the kindling for our fire. Here in Ireland we are once more locked down to within 5km of our homes. Rather than giving in to the ache for all the places I cannot go, I’ve been gazing back at when I discovered the east coast of this island for the first time.
Some of the biggest names in the business in the 21st century — including Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas and Bernard Tschumi — have spoken of the group’s influence on their work, and, in the 1960s, Superstudio helped establish Florence as a hotbed of avant-garde design. Yet today, the city’s museums contain hardly any references to the pathbreaking group.
Thomas Maltman’s The Land is a gloomy, strange novel. On one hand, it’s a tale of lost love, grief, loneliness, and physical entropy that follows a young man after a horrible accident as he takes care of a couple’s dog and property through the winter. On the other, it’s a timely story about the dangers and, for some, the appeal of religious zealotry, white supremacy, and conspiracy theories. Maltman uses elements of mystery, literary fiction, and noir to bring these overarching themes together cohesively, and he adds plenty of poetry along the way. The resulting narrative is dark and depressive, but it illuminates the way religious fanaticism can be a refuge for the lost, often with devastating consequences.
Both Mann and Gates appear optimistic that the world can stop climate change, but they are also under no illusions about the scale of the challenge we face and the many obstacles that lie in our way. They also show just how wrong those people are who think we cannot or should not succeed.
The boy waits, ladle in hand,
his gaze fastened to two eggs
poaching in the old woman’s red
clay bowl, but she isn’t doling out