In each episode writer and researcher Ian Grosz talks with a different writer from the Paperboats collective – a group of writers working across Scotland and beyond to highlight the impacts of climate change, the ecological collapse we are witness to, and the things we can do to bring about positive change.
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.
Episode One: Writer and Researcher Ian Grosz talks with Paperboats co-founders Sandy Winterbottom and Elaine Morrison.
We hear Kathleen Jamie’s inspirational poem, ‘What the Clyde said after Cop 26’, holding politicians to account and inspiring the Paperboats movement. Sandy and Elaine discuss the formation of Paperboats and how writers might connect with people on the issues surrounding climate change. The pair also talk about the importance of a just transition, the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty and the work of the Scottish Rewilding Alliance.
Episode Two: Ian Grosz talks with author Linda Cracknell about Scotland’s Flow Country, her book Doubling Back, and how important walking is to her writing practice.
Linda reads an extract from the new edition of Doubling Back, published by Saraband in May 2024, highlighting how important the peatbogs of Caithness are in alleviating the impacts of climate change, and how vulnerable they have been to commercial forestry practices and land misuse. She describes her time spent in the Flow Country in writing the new chapter of her book, her life-long relationship with walking, and the importance of landscape and place to her work.
Episode Three: Ian Grosz talks with naturalist, photographer and nature writer Polly Pullar, about the plight of the gannet and Polly’s lifelong relationship with nature and wildlife.
Polly talks about the beginnings of her deep connection with nature and wildlife growing up in Ardnamurchan on the west coast of Scotland, how that brought her solace through a difficult period and continues to inspire her passionately today. She discusses the plight of Scotland’s wildlife under the pressures of climate change and habitat loss, and reads from her Paperboats Zine piece, A Solan Goose Summer.
Episode Four: Ian Grosz talks with author and poet Karen Lloyd about microplastics and pollution in the UK’s Lake District National Park, about the Rights of Nature, and how we might protect it.
Karen outlines her connection to Paperboats Writers, her views on the role of the writer in a climate and ecological crisis, and reads from her piece Inside the Rockpool Shrimp there is a Dying Star, first published on Dark Mountain in 2022 and featuring in the Anthology of Speculative Nature edited by Jos Smith and Harry Saunders at the University of East Anglia. Karen talks about the pressures of tourism on the Lake District’s vulnerable habitats, the solutions found in Europe to protect fragile ecosystems from human disturbance, and how we might approach that in the predominantly cultural landscapes of the UK.
Episode Five: Ian Grosz talks with Poet Chris Powici.
Chris Powici lives in Perthshire in Scotland. For many years he taught creative writing at the University of Stirling, as well as at the Open University, but now concentrates on writing his own poetry and essays, mainly about how the human and natural worlds overlap. He is co-editor of New Writing Scotland and one of the key people behind the formation of the ‘Paperboats’ collective.
Chris talks about his role in the formation of Paperboats, his approach to writing poetry, and his thoughts on the role of the writer in the climate and ecological crisis. He reads his poems Night Fishing and Deer from his first collection, This Weight of Light (Red Squirrel Press, 2015), and explains how capturing a sense of the intangible – the ‘otherworlds’ we inhabit through imagination – is an important feature of his work. He closes with a reading of his poem Loch Striven from Issue 1 of the Paperboats zine.
Chris’s latest collection, Look, Breathe, is available from Red Squirrel Press at redsquirrelpress.com.
Episode Six: Ian Grosz talks with author and poet Leonie Charlton
Leonie lives in Argyll and is currently undertaking a practice-based PhD exploring Scotland’s ‘wild deer dilemma’ through the University of the Highlands and Islands. Her publications include her debut poetry pamphlet Ten Minutes of Weather Away (Cinnamon Press, 2021), and her travel-memoir Marram (Sandstone Press, 2020), which was Waterstone’s Scottish Book of the Month for April 2022.
Leonie reads an extract from her diary essay Fragments, which first featured in Issue 1 of the Paperboats Zine and is included in the travel writing anthology There She Goes, edited by Esa Aldegheri and published by Saraband in March 2025. She discusses the spiritual connections we have lost with nature, and the way she approaches writing about the more-than-human world. Leonie also talks about her PhD by practice, and the conflict of interests inherent in deer management and rewilding.
