Content warning: this episode contains one swearword (the s-word); brief mentions of cancer and grief.
“We need to start getting our hearts in the game and not just our heads.”
For this episode I interviewed Jesse Hill - IG sabbatverse. Jesse is a transdisciplinary researcher and writer exploring creative catharsis and environmental connection.
We talk about: the role of arts in engaging people with Earth sciences; the 8 sabbats in the Celtic Wheel of the Year; decomposition and connecting with the soil; the poetry in everything; how trauma and life shifts can change our relationship to nature; the magic of slime mould.
Jesse was also kind enough to do a reading of their poem ‘RE:Turners’ (text version below).
Many thanks to Jesse for a really lovely, calming and heartening conversation.
This podcast was produced by Kirsty Fox with music by Apalusa (Dan Layton).
Links and mentions
Film poem, ‘Spring (III)’ in Tentacular
The book we mention is Losing Eden by Lucy Jones
Lucy Jones essay on slime moulds
Sabbat Verse: (Re)Turning with the Seasons - PhD scrapbook on Instagram.
Fern Forward: Jesse’s blog about her experiences of long term health conditions and early parenthood.
Glossary
Sabbats and the Celtic Wheel of the Year: The Wheel of the Year represents a pagan holiday calendar that’s split into 8 sections, or sabbats. These 8 sabbats divide the year equally, marking the beginning of each season as well as their mid-points. They are: Winter Solstice (Midwinter / Yule); Imbolc (Candlemas); Spring Equinox (Ostara); Beltane (May Day); Summer Solstice (Midsummer / Litha); Lughnasadh (Lammas); Autumn Equinox (Mabon); Samhain (All Hallows).
Ecopoetics: the creative-critical edges between writing and ecology, sometimes encompassing eco-art as well.
Transdisciplinary: a research strategy that crosses disciplinary boundaries to create a holistic approach.
Liminality: liminal spaces are the in-between. So they might describe a transistional period in a person’s life be it coming of age, or a major life change. Or a liminal space might be that time in-between two seasons when autumn’s no quite over and winter is just beginning.
Poem by Jesse Hill ©
RE: Turners
Maggots get a bad rep.
Mushrooms, too.
The decomposers –
worming,
churning flesh and shit into elses,
to see but upturned lips and spit.
The soles
of our feet
depend upon them.
What else?
Houses, towers, cathedrals of waste unwasting.
More than a millenia
of ancestral shame and trauma
and the shame
building, rising for unborns to map and
lose themselves in.
So,
I thank the maggots.
I thank the fungi and
the resting,
the conversations,
the listening metabolism,
empathy,
the action.
To the ground I give my ready-to-rot:
Stagnant hours and efforts.
Memories of no's unheard,
of sex turned sour.
Tumours long gone but still-
the origins of scars of skin, mind, and gut.
Not to forget,
but to turn .
Return,
to compose
(re)composing
& (re)turning
to a composition of
stronger voices, bone, and stem.
A regaining of current
flowing through,
between hands over ears
(like water would –
does, like air –)
as inevitable.
Cultivating safe surrender
as to feel, to be
moaning on the brink between pleasure and pain, in the give-and-get oneness of it all,
as
we’re turning
into the stitching skin,
recoding mind,
& recuperating gut.
A trust
within this reclamation
in bangarang
&
into winged bluebottles,
agarics
fly.
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