To coincide with World Environment Day, John Laidler and I released a new album today.
Thirteen Ways of Considering Black Birds” was triggered by hearing a birdsong we couldn’t place while looking for whales in Gumbaynggirr Country. You can hear the song in track 1.
This audio work is a riposte to Wallace Stevens’ abstracted poetry and his poem ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird’. Gary Snyder began his poem ‘What You Should Know to be a Poet’, with:
all you can about animals as persons
the names of trees and flowers and weeds
names of stars . . .’ And I’d add, birds
The most recent report in Nature on the World Environment is terrible. Seven of the nine thresholds that allow for human life on earth have already been crossed, and this report does not consider ocean acidification, plastic and microplastics accumulation, forever chemicals, or antibiotic resistance. (Johan Rockström et al., ‘Safe and just Earth system boundaries’, Nature 31 May, 2023).
This world is so beautiful and we are destroying its future.
