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Here’s that ‘deep time reading list,' organised by topic. (‘FR’=further reading) #footprints
Seeing Deep Time: Roy Fisher’s poem, ‘Staffordshire Red,’ about driving through a rock cleft in the English midlands, gives us a glimpse of how, in the midst of the everyday, we also inhabit the flow of deep time. #footprints
FR: More than any other novel I’ve read, Clade by @cityoftongues shows what it is like to live through a multi-generational crisis like climate change. The pandemic chapter is unnervingly prescient too. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/14/clade-by-james-bradley-review #footprints
The City in Deep Time: Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities marvels at the inventiveness of city dwellers. Our cities are filled with countless objects, both wonderful and mundane. What are the chances than a paperclip or mobile phone will become a fossil? #footprints
FR: To find out how everyday objects might become fossils, read this report by Jan Zalasiewicz and others: https://sp.lyellcollection.org/content/395/1/1.full (if you have a subscription to Scientific American, his ‘A History in Layers’ is excellent). #footprints
Nuclear Legends and Atomic Priesthoods: The Marshall Islands have been subject to 67 nuclear tests since 1946. @kathykijiner’s incredible video poem, ‘Anointed,’ explores their legacy. https://vimeo.com/264867214 #footprints
FR: In 1984, semiotician Thomas Sebeok considered the problem of communicating the dangers of nuclear waste over 10,000 years. ‘Communication Measures to Bridge Ten Millennia’ included plans for an ‘atomic priesthood’: https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/6705990 #footprints
Stories of Plastic: In ‘The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction’ Ursula le Guin proposes that our first invention was the bag, a means to bring energy home. Stories do the same thing, she argues; so what stories might the X plastic bags made each year carry to the future? #footprints
FR: see @WanderingGaia’s incredible Transcendence on the origin of storytelling ( https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/298/298189/transcendence/9780241281116.html) #footprints
FR: ‘Synthetics created in the 20th century have become an evolutionary force, altering human biology and the web of life,’ writes @rebecca_altman: https://aeon.co/essays/how-20th-century-synthetics-altered-the-very-fabric-of-us-all #footprints
Songs of Deep Time: Robin Wall Kimmerer’s astonishing Braiding Sweetgrass (UK pub. 22/4) invites us to listen to a deep time song: “As a writer, a scientist, and a carrier of Skywoman’s story, I sit at the feet of my elder teachers listening for their songs.” #footprints
FR: Waanyi author Alexis Wright’s visionary novel Carpentaria, about the effect of mining on the lives and cosmology of indigenous Australians, is one of the great novels of the C21. #footprints
Frozen Libraries: the worlds frozen places contain a detailed record of climate history, locked up in bubbles of air—a record to rival the fantastical ‘The Library of Babel’ imagined by Jorge Luis Borges #footprints
FR: this BBC report on the melting of the Thwaites glacier in West Antarctica explains why one of the hardest places to reach on the planet is also one of the most important: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-51097309 #footprints
Thinking Extinction: We are on the brink of a catastrophic extinction. Biodiversity could take millions of years to recover. John Berger’s penetrating essay ‘Why Look at Animals?’ reflects on how our becoming human has been bound up with other creatures. #footprints
FR: philosopher @thomvandooren’s Flight Ways is the best thing I’ve read on ethics and extinction: http://cup.columbia.edu/book/flight-ways/9780231166195 And no-one put it better than Rilke, in his 8th Duino Elegy: “look out past death / … / with an animal’s wide gaze.” #footprints
Microbial Multitudes: @edyong209’s I Contain Multitudes tells the fascinating, multi-million year story of microbial life on Earth: https://www.theguardian.com/science/occams-corner/2016/aug/25/lifes-little-surprises-i-contain-multitudes-ed-yong #footprints
FR: poet @christianbok’s Xenotext project is an attempt to write a self-replicating pair of soonest in the DNA of an unkillable bacterium - a poem that will last until the sun explodes. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2011/04/the-xenotext-works #footprints
I also want to mention some amazing artists whose work delves into deep time: @ktmpaterson, creator of @FuturelibraryNO, Ilana Halperin, whose work explores our intimacy with deep time, and the brilliant plastic art of @littoralart. #footprints
Have fun exploring deep time! #footprints
