we haven’t had rain, we’ve had too much rain

As Benjamin Zephaniah wrote: ‘A few years ago if u said yu were Green / Yu were really seen as Red’ [Me green poem, in City Psalms, Bloodaxe Books, 1992].

Now the British Council has published “Feeling the Pressure. Poetry and science of climate change”, a short anthology of new poems (downloadable, see below), described as a “weather report, a British snapshot of intellectual and emotional reaction to things as they stand at the end of 2007:

It’s noticeable how many of the poets have adopted a rather oblique approach, almost seeming to shy away from direct statements about the predicament we face. Is that a lack of confidence in the facts? A loss of nerve? I don’t think so. It is more a refusal to jump on the bandwagon of self-satisfaction like those corporations preening themselves on account of their ever so slight ‘green’ credentials. There are no token gestures among these poems. The poets are more honest than that; they do not claim to have solutions or even some special understanding. What is striking throughout all the contributions, however, is the way in which the science of climate change has clearly entered the language and permeated the way we think [Paul Munden].

The contributions are really good, with the poems grouped in 5 sections, each introduced by short prose contributions by scientists. My own favourite poem is the editor’s “Mitigation”.

Now hopefully the British Council will assist a similar publication from scientists and poets in the those countries that have already suffered from, or will be most likely to be disproportionately affected by, climate change.

Feeling the Pressure. Poetry and science of climate change. Edited by Paul Munden. British Council, 2008. www.britishcouncil.org/switzerland-climate-change-anthology.htm

Cigarettes, coffee and strong drink

The market for the printed book is now global; the opportunities for the digital book are almost unimaginable. To be a writer in the English language today is to be one of the luckiest people alive.

…it remains the paradox of the world wide web and the global economy that, while this has been the decade in which millions have found a voice through the internet, only a minority has discovered an audience. Self-expression has been democratised, but books and writers still face that age-old struggle to achieve a readership. How they do that remains a mystery, but in the alchemy of literary success, ‘word of mouth’ remains essential.

Robert McCrum the literary editor of “The Observer” makes some interesting comments on the rapid changes that the world of books has experienced in the transitional decade bridging the 20th to the 21st century. And as an occasional blog writer both these quotes strike close to home! The revolution in book selling – the emergence of global book markets (Amazon) and new technologies (digitization) – will assuredly, as he says, result in an ‘iPod moment’.

McCrum sees the positive developments (in rich countries, and in particular the UK): that the printed book is more than holding its own, in part because of the arrival of new writers (“Zadie Smith generation” – for example, Hari Kunzru, Monica Ali, & Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) who are being strongly marketed on a global scale, and in part because of the emergence of on-line book selling (Amazon started in 1995), which translates into fast delivery to book readers, better pricing, a new lease of life to back catalogues, and developing new book markets. Its a customer focus but with corporate clout – best exemplified by Harry Potter, a world-wide best seller. The rise of book festivals and repackaging of literary prizes reveals how consumerism and celebrity have merged, giving new meaning to the phrase ‘the reading public’. There has been a proliferation of book blogs and book reviews, and an increase in sales of magazines such as  The London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, The New Statesman, & The Spectator; but whether this counteracts the tendency to narrow choice as publishers seek ‘winning’ talent rather than nurturing new authors remains to be seen. Likewise, it is difficult to balance the closure of small local independent bookshops with the rise of book sales in supermarkets, railway stations, & airports. Free e-book downloads have become ubiquitous for out-of copyright books (such as provided by Project Gutenberg & The DailyLit). Books are also going green: the average paperback liberates 3kg of CO2 in its manufacture; which of course can be offset by financing tree planting (at eco-libris). Increasing books are printed on certified paper; J.K. Rowlings started with Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (although rumour has it that the publisher may have jumped the gun …).

Where do these changes and the uncertainty that surrounds some of them leave book publishing, writers and readers in Africa? The relative lack of disposable income remains the main constraint for book buyers and sellers to enter local let alone global book markets. When we lived in Accra, Ghana, there were only a couple of dedicated bookshops, and a good second-hand bookshop in Osu, plus the university bookshop at Legon. It is much worse if you are in Monrovia, Liberia. Francophone West and Central Africa have benefited at least in the past from large expatriate populations (Abidjan was great for books in the mid-1980s).

Nigerian greats

Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka are great Nigerian writers. They are contemporaries whose writings have followed broadly parallel paths – initially in the footsteps of Cyprian Ekwensi & Amos Tutuola – drawing upon Igbo (Achebe) and Yoruba (Soyinka) oral traditional and folklore, then reflecting on the impact of European colonialism (in particular for Achebe a focus on Christianity) on African societies and institutions, and more recently on post-Independence experiences, not least the insidious effects of corruption and self-appointed and dictatorial Presidents-for-Life on national development.

Both encouraged new writers and literary spaces: Achebe was the founder & editor of the literary magazine Okike, Soyinka edited Transistion magazine. The critical and commercial success of Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart” (according to Wikipedia it is the most widely-read novel in modern African literature) effectively subsidised the Heinemann African Writers Series for many years.

Both have also been activists; their initiation was the Biafran war: Achebe as a supporter of and fund-raiser for succession, Soyinka as a peace-broker. Achebe forsook fiction for some 20 years following the civil war; Soyinka was imprisoned by the federalists for almost two years having been betrayed by (then) General Obasanjo at the onset of the war. Both made important contributions by reframing the political question about disappointing realities and failings of post-independence nation states. The question being not: can we afford democracy? Rather: how much can we afford not to develop democratic institutions, what is the cost in peoples’ livelihoods? Their activism, academic and literary lives and achievements are perhaps without parallel on the continent.

Admittedly, neither wrote directly about forests. But these icons of African literature juxtaposed rural and urban life, past and present, and drew upon the imagery of forests and the bush in their early work. In Achebe’s breakthrough novel “Things Fall Apart” the doomed protagonist Okonkwo clears the bush to make yam farms, collects medicinal plants from the forest to cure his daughter Ezinma, and acts in a group of masked spirit whose leader is “Evil Forest” in a ceremony to resolve a family dispute. Achebe followed “Things Fall Apart” with “No Longer At Ease” (1960), “Arrow of God” (1964) and “A Man of the People” (1966), and lastly with the equally acclaimed “Anthills of the Savannah” in 1987. Similarly, Soyinka’s play “A Dance of The Forest” (which was the winner of a contest for the official independence day play in 1960) features the “Forest Head” a godlike figure, and is somewhat fatalistic –  the present being depicted as no better than the colonialist past. The play is unsparing in its criticism of the nefarious nature of post-colonial Nigerian politics, and was unsurprisingly unpopular with the emerging political elite.

Soyinka’s “A Play of Giants” (1984) an entertaining but casual satire on African despots and their sycophants and apologists, contrasts with Achebe’s “The Trouble with Nigeria” also published in 1984 (“The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership“); and with Soyinka’s later work “Open Sore of a Continent” (1996) — a critique of the continuing crisis of Nigeria personified by the abject Abacha dictatorship, whose epilogue deals with murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1995 — for which Soyinka was accused of treason by the regime (earlier post on Ken Saro-Wiwa here).

Achebe’s polemic on Conrad’s racism may have in part cost him the Nobel prize for literature (but at least he is in good company), which was still deservedly awarded in 1986 to Soyinka, the first African winner -  later followed by Naguib Mahfouz, Nadine Gordimer & J.M.Coetzee.

Which of these two giants is your favourite can perhaps only be decided by the beer test.

Hallucinatory leadership

We have the most hallucination-inducing leaders-they are surpassingly bad at everything, or extremely good, depending on your point of view.Kibaki, in effect, has said: … Look. We Kikuyus endured twenty-four years of that Kalenjin man’s rule, and were regularly rigged out. We knew it, and so did you. We, unlike our violent Luo lesser-citizens or our wanna-be Kalenjin friends, did not engage in wanton acts of destruction for this reason. We bore our Moi-years burden in silence and with decorum, like everybody else in this country, we even managed to keep our heads above water, more or less. We had saved and secreted away enough, although diminished, shillings to begin to build again-and we have been working hard.You must admit that the street lights in Nairobi work now, and remember the new beauty of the roundabouts. Don’t you like flowers? And on this point: please tell your guys to stop burning our flower farms in the Rift Valley: there is going to be a rose crisis in Europe if you don’t watch out. It isn’t as if the new supermarkets and shops only sell things to Kikuyus: we’re all winning, here, guys! We were about to do global IPOs, bwana! We waited for our turn to come, and in 2002, it did (okay, it came for us again, but who’s counting?). We now do not understand what all this unmannerly screaming and shouting and wielding of pangas and matchboxes and gallons of petrol is all about, as we expect you to understand that you must stand in line. It isn’t your turn yet.Yes, we rigged: so what? So did you-we were just better at it, as you well know, as you admitted privately at the golf club. We won that rigging game, fair and square. So, shut up and get on with preparing for the next campaign in five years-we’ll have wrapped up our most important business by then, or at least convinced you to follow our plan instead of yours. We’ll buy you out, as always-what’s all this fuss about? You are welcome to have another factory or two, if that is the problem; if this will make you shut up.

Kibaki has said this, or words certainly to that effect, at the recent meeting of African Union heads recently. He was speaking to his peers-other rulers and regulators of Africans of a bewildering variety of tongues and tendencies, and yet, he was confident that they would understand his meaning. He knew that they knew how to read between his lines of “law and order,” of “institutional redress”: he was basically saying to his fellow African Excellencies, with a nudge and a wink, that the real problem in Kenya has come about because those idiot Luos don’t know how to take a fall, and the Kalenjin have always had dreams of grandeur; they think they’re in a movie for white people, or something. Someone, one of his Excellent Brothers, might even guffaw, at his subtleties. They understood his meaning clear and well.

In the meantime, Raila Odinga is failing every test of greatness that has walked up to him and practically slapped him in the face, this last month: he has been looking at the good of his country each day and deciding against it. He has decided that the chance of the presidency means more to him than the chance to be truly great, to be an outstanding African instead of just another quarrelsome Kenyan, petty and power-blinded. They’ll still write about him in the history books fifty years from now, and he doesn’t care what the reasons are, what stories we will be telling our children about him. His party may have planned mass human rights violations; they may indeed have been a touch over-enthusiastic, but his injured innocence knows no bounds. Kibaki’s Presidential Cronies would understand Raila’s point of view, too-they practice its tenets daily.

They are all one of a kind.

Splendid Conservation

Because the lumbermen are wiping out all the timber and never thinking of the future. They are in such a hurry to get rich that they’ll leave their grandchildren only a desert. They cut and slash in every direction, and then fires come and the country is ruined. Our rivers depend upon the forests for water. The trees draw the rain; the leaves break it up and let it fall in mists and drippings; it seeps into the ground, and is held by the roots. If the trees are destroyed the rain rushes off on the surface and floods the rivers. The forests store up water, and they do good in other ways.

For Zane Grey, born at the height of the cowboy age, the adage “larger-than-life” seems a perfect fit: a world-record holding fisherman, minor league baseball player and – the role for which he is best known – millionaire writer (who true to form later blew most of his fortune). Not only that but he is widely credited for launching the literary genre – the Western – writing dozens of novels, many adapted by Hollywood, taking the imagery of the American West worldwide (his novel “The Lone Star Ranger”, written in 1915, is taken to be the inspiration for the eponymous film & TV hero). He did much to popularise hunting and fishing, and became a champion of the American wilderness. Roll over Hemingway.

A late-starter at 30, he went on to be a prolific writer and was the best-selling author of his time. “Riders of the Purple Sage” was published in 1912, immediately sold over a million copies, and established the form of the modern Western. Extraordinarily he had only visited the American West a few years earlier.

Why was he so successful? Principally because he struck a nerve, he was authentic, he was hard working. His stories were firmly grounded in own travels and hunting trips in the West (which would strengthen his own conservationist ideals). His direct writing style was built upon the popular dime stories, and most of his stories follow a straightforward narrative plot often based cycles of captivity, seduction, pursuit and escape for the protagonists, normally strong-minded, individualistic characters, compelled to rebuild their lives in the West, from which they may or may not emerge redeemed. His adventures of those rugged people, conquerors and conquered, are played out against a rugged landscape — its beauty, wildness, fragility and immutable power — and rapid social changes such as the expansion of the frontier, the colonization of the West, industrialisation and the railroads. Grey invokes a simple code of conduct for his characters, wrote sympathetically of Native Americans, and was prescient about the transformation of the so-called wilderness. But just as cowboys were more than gunslingers, so Zane Grey has proved to be more than his caricature. A review of a recent biography (Zane Grey: His Life, His Adventures, His Women, by Thomas H. Pauly) is posted here.

Remarkably one of his earliest novels “The Young Forester” (1910) has all of this (except seduction: its a story for boys). Its main protagonist goes to Arizona to work as a forest ranger. On arrival the first transformation is a prerequisite: getting kitted out with “Winchester, revolver, bolsters, ammunition, saddle, bridle, lasso, blanket” and buying a horse and pack-pony. Then the adventure can begin in earnest. Its a rippin’ yarn, with an assortment of goodies and baddies – such as the corrupt timber man – kidnappings, gunfights, and bear hunting, with plenty of good forest management advice, which would not be out of place in a modern text book, scattered throughout.

the Government must own the forests an’ deal wisely with them. These mountain forests are great sponges to hold the water, an’ we must stop fire an’ reckless cuttin’. The first thing is to overcome the opposition of the stockmen, an’ show them where the benefit will be theirs in the long run. Next the timber must be used, but not all used up. We’ll need rangers who’re used to rustlin’ in the West an’ know Western ways. Cabins must be built, trails made, roads cut. We’ll need a head forester for every forest. This man must know all that’s on his preserve, an’ have it mapped. He must teach his rangers what he knows about trees…We’ll give [timber and wood] free to the settler an’ prospector. We’ll sell it cheap to the lumbermen–big an’ little. We’ll consider the wants of the local men first…The head forester must know his business, an’ not let his range be overstocked. The small local herders an’ sheepmen must be considered first, the big stockmen second. Both must be charged a small fee per head for grazin’ … Fire is the forest’s worst enemy. In a dry season like [this Penetier] would burn like tinder blown by a bellows. Fire would race through here faster ‘n a man could run. I’ll need special fire rangers, an’ all other rangers must be trained to fight fire, an’ then any men living in or near the forest will be paid to help. The thing to do is watch for the small fires an’ put them out.

At the end the Chief of the Forest Service declares a new policy for the Arizona national forest: “I call it splendid conservation… It considers the settler and lumberman instead of combating him.”

Thanks to Ken Rosenbaum for telling me about “The Young Forester”.

Not quite the end of the year

Not quite the end of the year, still dreaming…

Xmas tree books

For many people this is the time of year for lists: shopping lists, lists of presents to give, lists of books to prompt Santa, end-of-year “to do” lists, and – for some – lists of resolutions.

The last three can be combined – books to buy (or beg, steal and borrow), books to finish and books to look forward to. This would be my list of books to read, starting with three recommended by The Times in this season for trees – and for lovers of trees: Richard Mabey’s “Beechcombings: The Narrative of Trees“, Roger Deakin’s “Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees“, and “The Wild Places” by Robert Macfarlane.

To which I would add Richard Mabey’s “Concise Flora Britannica” and Roger Deakin’s “Waterlog: A Swimmer’s Journey Through Britain”.

Plus two books of poetry, old and new. First, “Collected Poems of Ted Hughes” (there was a good article recently on the poet’s involvement in environmental campaigns), and second, “Woods Etc.” by Alice Oswald.

Also and more eclectically: “Feet in the Clouds: A Tale of Fell-Running and Obsession” by Richard Askwith, “The Worm Forgives the Plough” by John Stewart Collis, “Understories: The Political Life of Forests in Northern New Mexico” by Jake Kosek, and “Unnatural Wonders. Essays from the Gap Between Art and Life” (Arthur Danto).

Two text books: Herman Daly’s “Ecological Economics Textbook: A Workbook for Problem-based Learning”, and “Forest Ecology and Conservation: A Handbook of Techniques” by Adrian Newton.

And one to look out for in the library: “Welsh Furniture, 1250-1950″ by Richard Bebb.

Finally, a late addition: “Ecological Debt: Global Warming & the Wealth of Nations” by Andrew Simms.

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Zimbabwe misery

I was in Zimbabwe on the eve of independence in April 1980. We danced all night in the shattered ruins of the hotel at Victoria Falls. I returned with the African Development Bank on a project appraisal mission mission in 1986 (to fund a resettlement/rural development programme in the Zambezi Valley), and again in the late 1990s to research economic participatory research techniques for forest resources. It is nothing less than horrific what Mugabe has done to the country.

UPDATE 4 Dec 2007:

A group of writers – including Wole Soyinka, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Ben Okri, JM Coetzee and Nadine Gordimer – have sent an open letter to all European and African leaders ahead of the EU-Africa Summit accusing them of “political cowardice” for failing to squarely address “two of the world’s worst humanitarian crises” namely Zimbabwe and Darfur.

What can we say of this political cowardice? We expect our leaders to lead, and lead with moral courage… When they fail to do so they leave all of us morally impoverished.

UPDATE 7 Dec 2007:

For the latest on the current situation in Darfur and continuing recalcitrance of the Sudanese government click here.

A delegation of British parliamentarians, led by Lord Steel, the former leader of the Liberal Democrats and Michael Howard, the former Tory party leader, flew to Sudan this week to press Bashir to respond to the serious allegations.

His answers were unsatisfactory,” said Howard. “[He] gave no good reason why he is blocking the involvement of Swedish and Norwegian advanced engineering battalions in the combined UN and African Union force.

It is clear the Sudanese government is deliberately hampering the ability of the peacekeepers to safeguard the security of the refugees.

UPDATE: 9 Dec 2007

Even the sanguine Euro-crat (and current president of the EU) was sufficiently moved to ask Mugabe:

We cannot understand that those who once fought for the freedom of their country now deny that freedom to their citizens

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Elephants a-piling teak

A friend – Michael Richards – has recommended Amitav Ghosh’s fourth novel “The Glass Palace“. I haven’t read it but a quick look at some book reviews is enough for me to put it on my must-read list.

Described as a sweeping, historical romance, this is an epic tale which traces the fortunes of an orphan and the maid to the Burmese queen and their family from the arrival of the British (and their Indian troops) in Mandalay in 1885, through WW2 and to post-Independence Burma and contemporary Southern Asia — and en route takes in teak forest management and rubber plantations. A review in the Guardian book review concludes:

The implication, I think, is that history itself has its romances, that actual people do survive its horrors and defeats, or succumb to them with a dignity we wish we ourselves had. When Ghosh has one of his characters say that “politics . . . cannot be allowed to cannibalise all of life,” the context is Myanmar and the legacy of empire, and the point is similar to the one that the same character has already made about the ‘greatest danger’ and the ‘final defeat’. But the survival of dignity and generosity and honour is different from mere survival, and Ghosh’s characters are not so much idealised as highlighted against the darkness, creatures whose luck and kindness go hand in hand. Is this an answer to the bleakness of his political vision? It is not a political answer, and it is certainly not a solution. But it is a response to the terrible, intricate history he evokes so well, and it could perhaps be a condition of his, or anyone’s, acceptance of this inheritance that we refuse the despair it so plausibly urges on us.

Ghosh’s blog is subtitled “The vehemence of pride and audacity of freedom“

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Amazonas Film Festival

The Amazonas Film Festival is taking place in Manaus. The self-styled eco-festival was established four years ago by Lionel Chouchan, who says in The Times article: “A single movie … can have more impact than any amount of Kyoto Protocol. Initially the idea of running an eco-festival appalled me because there wasn’t enough decent original material being made, but that has changed dramatically since 2003. The debate has gripped fashionable directors – eco-priests – who want to get involved. And it has become a good way for locals to find new ways of making money other than logging, selling parrots or clearing the forest for [ironically] eco-fuels.”

If life was only so easy… but it prompts the idea of starting a listing of forest films to accompany forest novels.

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