creative non-fiction essays
A year on since the first UK lockdown, Radio 4 invites five writers to tell us about the ways in which the pandemic has changed their relationship with the outside world.
Five writers on how a year of lockdowns has changed their relationship with the nature on their doorstep. This is nature writing for the ordinary, overlooked and not-so-great outdoors close to home.
What happens to nature writing when our access to the great outdoors becomes restricted? We asked writers to reflect on their personal experience of the past year and tell us about their small journeys into the outside world. Those patches of ground, water and sky close at hand which somehow seem more precious now that our access to the outdoors has become so strictly rationed.
In episode four, the artist and writer Amanda Thomson records the natural year unfolding around her Highlands home, which forms a jarring disconnect with the news cycle drifting in from the world beyond. Parts of this piece had their origin in another essay, 'Still, Life', which was commissioned by the Willowherb Review for the Aerial Festival.