Summer is in retreat, now, and even here in the middle of the city you can feel the pull of the seasons strengthening towards the darker side of the year. In the next few days, we will be publishing our selection of pieces from the Deep Waters project, our summer call for writing in response to the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster.

First, it’s time to look ahead to issue two of Dark Mountain. Once again, we are looking for writing which emerges from the conversations around this project, stories by which to steer in uncertain times and voices from beyond the human bubble.

We’re proud of the first book – and encouraged by the responses we’ve had from readers over the past few months. The range of essays, conversations, stories, poems and images within it should give you a clearer sense of the scope of what we’re looking for than we were able to when we made our original invitation to contribute last year.

But we also want to move things on, to dig deeper. In the next book, we want to go further in exploring the “uncivilised writing” we called for in the manifesto. We’re looking for pieces which are hard to categorise, which reflect the messiness of life as we experience it, which have the high wildness John Berger recognises when he says (with Jay Griffiths’ marvellous books in mind):

“Reality is such that both language and imagination have to exaggerate, in order to confront it truly.”

So break down the boundaries between forms, bring us writing which negotiates with and speaks for non-human reality, beyond the bubble of civilisation and the human world.

Take us down to the ground level, too. We have set out some big arching arguments about the converging crises in which we find ourselves. Rather than rehearse these grand debates, let’s move towards the personal, the specific, the local. Write about the place where things become real for you.

And don’t feel constrained to write about particular subjects or themes. We’re not necessarily looking for “nature writing” or stories about climate change. We want to find writing with a long stride, words which will outlive our way of living. How many of the novels being written today will people be able to read in fifty years time, knowing the changes we were already living through, and not find irrelevant or offensive? Whatever you write about, do so in a way which will endure because it does not take too much for granted.

Dark Mountain II will be a hardback book, produced in collaboration with Bracketpress and published in spring 2011. To be considered for this issue, your contributions should reach us by Monday November 22nd. As with the first book, we welcome images as well as text.

You can send us your work by email – info@dark-mountain.net – or by post to:

The Dark Mountain Project
c/o School of Everything
18 Victoria Park Square
London E2 9PF
United Kingdom

Posted by Dougald. Wednesday, September 1st, 2010 at 2:15 pm.