Inspired by the experience of writing the dramatic scenes in The Magnitude of All Things as well as other writing I’ve done, I’m interested in experimenting with text generally. I’m also a big fan of the book The Great Derangement by Amitav Ghosh which asks why more literature does not touch on the climate catastrophe given its magnitude. I am interested in exploring the cultural experience of climate change in this writing. Where I live, British Columbia, is now a climate frontline. Hundreds of people died in the record shattering heat last June. We felt temperatures that curled the air and breathed smoke so thick it obscured the other side of the street.
But it wasn’t only smoke that hung heavy in the air. I heard it whispered in stores, discussed in the news, and saw it on the faces of strangers. Blue skies had returned but the emotional toll lingered. It felt like a collective awakening to the pain of climate catastrophe. Suddenly I felt less alone. For many were joining me in a place I’d been for years.
It was almost ten years ago when climate grief stole my breath for the first time. One July day I became mesmerized by tiny white flecks falling from the sky. I thought it was snow but quickly realized it was ash from a fire fueled by climate change. My sister had died a few years earlier. I knew grief well. But this was the first time I felt grief for the changing world around me; one with apocalyptic skies, red suns, and showers of ash. That epiphany led to my making the film The Magnitude of All Things. It took me to some of the planet’s hardest hit climate frontlines to explore ecological grief and loss.
The writing I intend to do in this residency, tentatively titled “In This Place, This Time” (or “The World Upside Down”) continues the work I did for Magnitude by exploring how the threat of an uninhabitable world understandably stirs up the most difficult emotions. It also explores how it calls into question dominant cultural narratives. After all, climate change destabilizes more than the weather. It also destabilizes us.
My hope is these experiments in writing will lead to a collection of creative nonfiction essays (or perhaps another form of writing like fiction or a screenplay) that will have value for those struggling to make meaning, find purpose and take action “In This Place, This Time.”
