A new monthly podcast has been launched today (October 4) by Paperboats: a collective of writers focused on nature and environment in a time of climate and ecological breakdown.
In each episode, streaming now on your preferred platform, host Ian Grosz meets with a different writer from the Paperboats collective to discuss their work, the issues they write about, and the things we can do to help bring about positive change.
Episode 1, ‘We Will Rise’, features two founding members of the Paperboats collective, Sandy Winterbottom (author of The Two-Headed Whale, shortlisted for the Saltire Society First Book of the Year Award), and Elaine Morrison (Scots writer and poet).
They discuss the formation of Paperboats, inspired by the poem ‘What the Clyde Said, After COP26’, written by Makar Kathleen Jamie (National Poet for Scotland 2021-2024) in response to the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow. We hear Kathleen’s inspirational poem and Sandy and Elaine talk about how writers might connect with people on the issues surrounding climate change. They also talk about the importance of a just transition, the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty and the work of the Scottish Rewilding Alliance.
Elaine Morrison said: ‘We decided to launch the Paperboats Podcast in collaboration with Ian and Station House Media Unit (shmu) in Aberdeen as a way of extending our reach, giving a broader platform for the writing in our e-zine published on our website – which features essays, short fiction and poetry in English, Scots and Scottish Gaelic – and opening up space for discussions around our collective concerns about the state of nature and the climate crisis.’
If you’re concerned about climate change, want to delve further into the issues surrounding it, and like great writing, follow and subscribe to the Paperboats Podcast to hear from a host of fantastic nature writers.
More information about Paperboats is available on Instagram @paperboatswriters and @paperboatswrite
Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
About the host
Ian Grosz is a writer and creative writing tutor based in the northeast of Scotland. He holds a PhD in creative writing and has work published in numerous anthologies, journals and magazines both in print and online. His essay ‘Sycamore’ features in Issue 2 of the Paperboats Zine.
Subsequent episodes
In Episode 2, ‘The Flow Country’ (available on Friday 1 November), Ian chats with author Linda Cracknell about her essay collection Doubling Back, and the importance of the Flow Country – the vast area of bog peatland in northern Scotland which is the first and only Peatland UNESCO World Heritage Site in the world.
Originally published in 2014 and based around a series of walks that retrace paths in memory, Linda’s book Doubling Back was serialised for BBC radio. A revised edition was published this year by Saraband to include an essay on a new journey through the Flow Country. Linda reads an extract from the new work, and talks about the importance of landscape and place to her practice as both a writer and creative writing tutor.
In Episode 3 – ‘A Solan Goose Summer’ (available on Friday December 6) – Ian talks with naturalist, photographer and nature writer Polly Pullar about the plight of the gannet, and Polly’s life-long relationship with nature.
Polly talks about the beginnings of her deep connection with nature and the wild growing up in Ardnamurchan on the west coast of Scotland, how that brought her solace through a difficult period in her childhood, which she writes about in her memoir The Horizontal Oak, and continues to inspire her passionately today. She discusses the plight of wildlife under the pressures of climate change and habitat loss, and reads from her Paperboats Zine piece, ‘A Solan Goose Summer.’