Peat, Diesel and Seaweed: A Poetic Inquiry into the Green Transition in Northwest Highlands and Islands Coastal Communities by Mandy Haggith

This presentation will introduce a project using poetry to explore peatland restoration, marine diesel and seaweed in coastal communities in the northwest Highlands and Islands. These issues are very significant in our region for their impact on climate change emissions but because they are hidden – underground, underwater or over the horizon - they have been less widely discussed locally than issues like road or air travel, energy generation, housing and food.

The project is a creative study embedded in my home community in partnership with the Northwest 2045 network of community organisations. A preliminary survey revealed a widespread hopelessness about climate change, and particularly young people expressed heart-breaking negative emotions about it: despair, fear, fury and sadness. So the project focus has become seeking some hope, through creativity and wonder at the more-than-human world, having fun and helping folk to dream about a better future. I will discuss my approach and perform some poems that have been generated by poetic inquiry during the project.

Mandy Haggith is a poet, novelist and non-fiction writer, obsessing around how we relate to the more-than-human world, now, in history and into the future. Her most recent sea-poetry book is Briny, a forthcoming non-fiction book is about elm trees and her art collaborations have been Trees Meet Sea and The Liminal Zone. Mandy is a lecturer in creative writing and literature at UHI and an honorary research fellow at the Scottish Association for Marine Science. My research focus is poetic inquiry into climate change, trees and the sea.

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