The Dark Mountain Project has been a long time in gestation; longer, probably, than either Dougald or I, its twin begetters, really know. We’ve explained, elsewhere, why we have decided to do this, and in a month or so, with the launch of our manifesto, we’ll be laying our thoughts out in a lot more detail.
But for me, personally, there have been a number of revelatory moments along the long path that has led to this point. I’ve been ‘a writer’ for twenty years or so, and have been what is amusingly called a ‘professional writer’ (someone who scrabbles around trying to earn money through his writing, whilst generally behaving in a manner which no-one in paid employment would get away with for more than five minutes) for a decade or so. In this time I have completed two non-fiction books (published), two novels (unpublished), three volumes of poetry (they kind of meld into each other, but a publication contract for the latest manifestation sits next to me on my desk as I write this; I regard it as my greatest and possibly only literary achievement.) On top of that are the uncountable bits of journalism I have thrown out into the world, about 5% of which are possibly still worth reading.
It would be easy to make this cacophany of words into a thing in itself, but writing without some kind of centre, some kind of purpose, some kind of (and I use this word with great hesitation) ‘message’, is of no interest to me. Alongside my writing, I have for twenty years been what is usually called an ‘environmentalist’. For me, this means I see myself as being on a mission to challenge the unthinking domination and destruction of the wider world by homo sapiens sapiens. The human relationship with the non-human world is the biggest story of our time; compared to it, all others pale into pallid nothingness.
So why is it so hard to write about it? I have written a lot about it, of course, as have many other people, and much of this writing has been dull or shouty or predictable or cowardly or aggressive or narrowly sectarian. It’s almost impossible to be an ‘environmental’ writer without falling into one of these bear-pits. The reasons why are worth exploring at length, and I’ll do so at a later date. All I’ll say now is that we are here because we want to do something entirely different.
What this means is that the Dark Mountain Project is not just another of those well-meaning attempts to ‘bring together artists concerned about the environment’. It’s not an attempt to focus the minds of poets on ‘the challenges of sustainability’, or to get more keen, young writers to ‘tackle subjects’ like climate change or deforestation. It is something altogether more fundamental than that, and altogether more challenging too. We want to be able to take a cold, hard look at the human predicament, without necessarily being obliged to have a ‘solution’ to offer. We are not pre-judging anything, nor offering trite ‘answers’. A novelist, after all, is not expected to have ‘solutions’ to the human predicament. A poet is not expected to provide ‘answers’ or a political game-plan.
We are here to try and unpick the reality of what we are and what we have done and why and where it might lead us. We are not here to offer false hope; but neither are we here to dwell on doom. The constant and ongoing human gnawing at the warp and weft of life on Earth does not look destined to end happily, and to pretend otherwise is to lie to ourselves. But what writers ought to be able to do is to examine this process, and our place in it, and to do so from beyond the framework of our current cultural assumptions. This is hard; very hard. But it needs to be done, and it needs to be done now.
In my next couple of blog posts I’m going to explain myself a bit more by focusing on two writers who have inspired me, personally, to set this project in motion: a poet from the past who, for me, is one of the few writers brave enough to take an ‘uncivilised’ perspective on the human tragedy; and a novelist from the present whose complacent solipsism is an object lesson in the dangers of taking yourself, and your civilisation, far too seriously.
Paul
Looking forward to hearing more!