Words Against Mental Illness Part 5 - The Nature of Writing for Nature With Keith Broomfield

Transcript

Nobody gave me sin for this That’s reason why I try both This is all that’s old, I can see a thousand times of this I’m with Keith, Keith do you want to introduce yourself? Hello my name is Keith Brumfield, I’m a nature writer I write weekly nature columns for several newspapers, the Courier, the Press and Journal I also write books, I’ve written several books on wildlife including If Rivers Could Sing which is on wildlife year of my local river, Scottish Wildlife Odyssey that was a travel wildlife odyssey if you like, a journey through Scotland and a similar journey through Britain for my book Wild Quest Britain and my most recent book is called Wild Edinburgh and that’s about the wildlife from my home city Edinburgh which I’m very passionate about because Edinburgh is just such an amazing green city so full of wildlife It really is, interestingly second author I’ve spoken today who bases their stuff in Edinburgh but the other one was Val Penny who murders people in Edinburgh presumably I’m hoping you’re not murdering anyone and so tell me about the wildlife of Edinburgh Well it’s just so diverse, cities are amazing places for wildlife If you think of all the green spaces just in the form of gardens for example there’s all the garden lawns, there’s bird feeders getting out that benefits birds there’s connectivity in the environment, the wild environment with railway lines for example and walkways, these are green corridors, there’s the cemeteries you get the amazing old trees, oak trees and sycamores and limes, fantastic trees and they too have wild green open spaces which are amazing for wildlife In the case of Edinburgh, Edinburgh is almost a league above many other cities because you’ve got Holyrood Park for example, a huge area with the crowning glory of Arthur’s seat what other capital city can boast a hill 800ft high as a centrepiece Well you speak a volcano, right? Absolutely and you see all the volcanic signs there and in fact some of the rich, basaltic, volcanic outflows are quite rich in minerals and that’s very good for plants and flowers and that’s good for plants and flowers and that’s good for butterflies and all kinds of creatures like that and you’ve got the coast of Edinburgh from Crammond, the huge expanse of the drum sands there’s so much wildlife there, wading birds, attracted by the cockles and the mussels and all the invertebrates that live in the mud all the way along to Wardy Bay which is between Granton and Leith and that really is in the heart of Edinburgh’s coastline if you like and there’s so many interesting creatures are found there fish called a shani which even sunbathes, a sunbathing fish at low tide kind of a little basket by the edge of rock pools and it can even move from rock pool to rock pool at low tide which is given its other name, the sea frog so it’s got all these kind of fascinating creatures and for me as a child growing up in Edinburgh it was the foxes that you got on the railway embankments that kind of really kind of arose my passion as a youngster I find it amazing that you could get an animal size of a small dog actually living and thriving in a city I find that amazing Yeah well I lived in London for years and there’s so many foxes in London and you’d be amazed, it’s just like what this is most urban place you can imagine, they thrive there but you’re a writer right so is writing an excuse to go and see the wild or is the writing a secondary thing? Do you go and see things because you want to write about them or do you write about them because you’ve gone and seen them? Gosh that’s a very interesting question which I never thought about I suppose it brings a discipline to seeing places you wouldn’t normally go to my first book for example if rivers could sing and that was a wildlife year on the River Devon which is mostly in Clack Manningshire a small part of the rivers in Persia and Kenroster as well but the whole discipline of writing the book so it’s essentially a journey from the source down to the sea down to the estuary of River Devon which is in the inner first and fourth and it kind of did give you a discipline because I wanted to write about every segment of the river and I’d walk the river a lot and I’d fall in love with the river and it’s wildlife but I thought writing a book about it would give me that kind of order to do the whole thing, to explore it properly and maybe explore things I wouldn’t normally explore such as the source, finding the source up in the ocals and just kind of working my way down and the more you find more questions happen and you see more things and you think about things in a different way so it’s an eye opener I find to do these kind of journeys and often on these journeys as well for example Scottish Wildlife Odyssey which is my nature trek and nature journey through Scotland I went to a lot of new places which was good a place I’ve always wanted to visit which was amazing but I also went back to some of my former haunts from my childhood and I liked that just seeing the changes that has happened so I like the discipline writing brings for me to explore wildlife and it does often in my mind bring more questions than answers it just makes me more enthralled about what we have in our door steps Yeah, well I’m a visual artist so I’m always on the lookout for ideas and I’m in the wild and I’m looking at things because visually they stimulate me and they give me ideas but then I take them back and I will make something completely different out of them but then I’m in my space like in my studio or in my house so when you write do you just take some notes out there in the wild maybe some photographs and bring it back to your house do you have a space to go and write? what are you doing when you’re writing? Yeah, so I should be more disciplined this way some books I would take notes as I went along but after a while I just kind of absorbed everything on the day and then we’d kind of put it down on paper just very quickly in the evening just what I’d seen and all that kind of stuff and then I’d time to mull it over and then over the next few days I’d maybe write that chapter on the things I have seen and as I would write the chapter for example I would think your mind goes off in a tangent I found for example if you find invertebrates like nymphs a living river based for example your mind goes off in a tangent how these are important further up the food chain and for example in rivers these are underwater insect larvae or the engine room of the river so everything is kind of connected so it kind of comes together and often I don’t actually have a plan for a book I have an idea for a book but I don’t have a rigid plan I’m going to do this in chapter one, this in chapter two, chapter three it just kind of evolves because what I’ve done in chapter three will lead these on to chapter four it’s just kind of that evolution and that how the book works so that works for me, I don’t know if that’s a good thing to do or a bad thing but I find that works for me I just like to kind of, obviously the book drifts as I kind of move into different chapters and different segments of nature so I mean your books are, you’re reporting things that you see in the world right and you’re creating words that illustrate these is it autobiographical about you, are you weaving yourself in there or is it about the things that you’re observing, about the places that you are yeah it’s not really autobiographical unless I’m mentioning a particular place that you know had a huge influence of me for example in childhood or I spent a lot of time in my late teens, early twenties in Aberdeen for example I studied theology at Aberdeen University there so there are places there that are really close to my heart and I’ll mention that in my writing for example in Aberdeenshire there’s a Glen called Glen Dye which is near Bankry and then it’s kind of one of the rolling hills of South Deeside and I used to go out there a lot in my early twenties and I loved the place, I go there in the evenings in summertime and I just see so many things, hen harriers and mountain hares and creatures like that and then when I moved away from Aberdeen I didn’t actually go back to Glen Dye for about 20 years and the reason was I was almost scared to go back because I didn’t want to go back and be disappointed because my memories were not as good as the actuality so for one of my books Scottish Wildlife Odyssey I did go back to Glen Dye and I’m pleased to say it was just like how I remembered it it was beautiful, it was full of wildlife so I was bringing that kind of autobiographical comparison if you like into my writing but on the whole my books are my observations so it is like storytelling but just from what I see and what I record and I like to bring in the myths and traditions around nature as well because humanity and nature are so closely interwoven especially from the times past I love that you said that, it’s a big passion of mine that we are not separate from the earth, we are not separate from nature we are not above or distinct or beside, we can’t live without it and we are part of it and I love being outside, I just love it and I might spend, my day job involves being in front of a computer my hobby, making art involves being in a, you know, I can’t do this outside it doesn’t really work and so, but I take any opportunity I can get and that’s why I’m, obviously I’m English but I live in Scotland and because you can just go out the door here and find something amazing I can just go there, I’m one minute away I’ll find something amazing, an amazing view, something close to me and no people and so doing what you do, you must spend a lot of time are you on your own, a lot of the time outside, do you take people with you, you’ve got a dog? Yes, we do have a dog, my wife will come from me for walks a lot sometimes I go on my own, sometimes with friends and I enjoy walking with friends because I enjoy pointing things out to them and I hope they enjoy it as well I hope they’re enough again I hope they’re not bored by going out with a wildlife geek but that’s actually quite an important point in that because it is important not to be too geeky in my writing and I try not to be, I try to make wildlife accessible I don’t want to kind of go into the deep science behind things it’s kind of like touch writing if you like but just kind of hopefully inspire people and then make people question perhaps about other things in nature but certainly talking about the tradition and the mythology surrounding nature which goes back to the dawn of time that is a very important thing to recognise and obviously people in the past have a much closer empathy with nature than we do now and we know which plants were suitable not just to eat but for medicines for example and things like that yeah I mean you really see it coming from south-east of England there’s a lot of people down there it’s a big place but it’s full of humans and in Scotland the people here whether they’re imports like me or people that were born here like yourself there’s so much more of a sense of that mythology and that history and that closeness to the land and in a sense you can imagine that if in south-east of England there was just less people that maybe they would still be close to that but everyone’s obsessed about this giant city that sits in the middle which has its own charms and it’s quite good that you’re writing about Edinburgh which is obviously it’s not a huge city but it’s very populous and it’s dense, dense, dense but it’s got so much going on there and it’s just such an amazing place to be that I don’t think too many people there would be thinking about the nature an interesting point there, you mentioned London I’d argue that London is probably one of our greenest cities in many ways there’s so many open green spaces from Hyde Park, there’s marshlands, there’s… is it Raydon Marsh? all these kind of places fast there and incredible wildlife there I would say London is one of my favourite cities to visit for all kinds of reasons there’s so much going on but it’s a really good place for nature so you could be living and working in one of the biggest capital cities in the world but you saw nature on your doorstep, what you say and you do have to travel great distances to see nature it’s all there on your doorstep whether it’s a city park or whether it’s the Cairngorm Mountains it’s all there well just get out there, right? and I think that you said you write weekly nature columns you’ve got however many books clearly when you leave the house you know you’re not having to search around for things to talk about every time you go you go find something new and there’s always something to be there you think you’ve got another 20 books in you? the thing is, this is the most common question I get asked my friends, I was out for a walk in the hills with some school friends just last week and they say how do you find things to write about every week so I write three nature columns for the career, for the pressing journal and for the aloe advertiser and I just say it’s so easy, I mean just look around you there’s always something, it’s not possible to go out for a walk and not see nature it’s there, it’s omnipresent, it’s all around us and okay, you might not see a golden eagle it might not be something people class as exciting but you’re going to see snails or insects or butterflies or plants you just walk in the centre of Edinburgh you get these plants growing in the cracks and the pavement so that’s nature and incredible resilience on nature and I write about this in Wild Edinburgh there’s cobblestones in the new town, there’s pineapple weed and plantains growing in the cracks and a lot of people might not like seeing the thing that makes the city look a bit scruffy but actually enjoy seeing how nature is living on our doorstep yeah, nature is resourceful and it’s resilient and so I love spring, I love spring because yeah okay, winter’s got its charms but once a year you get this show nature puts on a show of colour and just growth and renewal and for me it’s like Disney Land comes to me every year for free and I don’t have to queue because I do not like queuing and it’s just the most spectacular thing and I think people just don’t notice it they’re like sitting there on their phones thinking oh I’m going on all the dates of bloody Spain in two months and that’s what they’re thinking about like are you kidding me look around you, it’s the most amazing thing and I agree with you, it doesn’t matter where you are it’s happening every single inch of every space in every part of every country I guess and I agree, spring is by far my favourite season and you can see signs of spring we were talking just now in early November but you can actually see signs of spring now happening down on the rivers for example dippers which are like a small songbird living in rivers they’re starting to set up territories Tony Owls are actually, they’re hooting like mad just now they’re setting up their territories all in preparation for spring so that, so in a way spring never stops animals aren’t even preparing now but I agree, I love the green verdancy of spring the newly emerged leaves, you know the fresh limey greenness to them that you don’t get later on and autumn, I think it’s probably my second favourite season you know, after August it was a kind of balmy month and the air is kind of, you know, kind of balmy and kind of heavy and it’s really got this crispness in the air that happens in September and then the geese start arriving and it’s another kind of big season of change and the colour, you know, with the leaves turning and there’s so much happening Yeah and there’s so much to even see and I think that, so I’ve got my same walks that I do around here they’re amazing, but I do the same paths because I just need to get out, I’m not going to walk up a mountain or something just get out to get some fresh air and the same paths give me a different thing every day and as you go through the year you can just see things changing and it’s just a new story to tell so I can see how you don’t run out of things to talk about and that you can just go deeper and deeper and deeper and learn about things and the mythology, how much do you think the mythology really brings it alive to you how much does that, you know, situate you in the landscape? Yeah, it does and you kind of wonder, you know, what are four bearers’ thoughts I’ve just written a book on the north-east Scotland for example which will be published next year and in the north-east in Aberdeenshire there’s a lot of stone circles and I find these amazing places that are kind of, pretty kind of humbling just walking around a stone circle and there’s one near Bankrea on this side that I went to and it was, I think it was February March and I could hear Song Thrush singing and the Song Thrush is a pretty beautiful song but I couldn’t just help thinking, you know, our ancestors by the stone circle we’d been hearing the very same music from Song Thrush and all that kind of, the same experiences that we’re getting now and they would have kind of, obviously revered nature, worship nature and you could see why they’d been scared by thunderstorms for example you know, you think the gods are angry you can see where you get all that coming from just from the wildness around them Yeah, no, I love it and Scotland’s just full of it it’s a great place to be and I’m here for a reason OK, so I’m going to bring this to a close where can people find you? So, I’ve got my own website, keithbrimfield.com and I’m on Facebook and Twitter or X, Instagram and Blue Sky as well so, or you can read my columns in the Courier, Press and Journal, Alawa Advertiser And your books are available all the user places? Yes, online bookshops, yes, you can just google the book or google my name and you’ll find the book And your next book I think you mentioned? Yeah, so next one is provisionally called Wild Trek Northeast and that’s done, it’s like a nature journey through Angus, Aberdeenshire and Maury just kind of focusing on the amazing wildlife of that corner of Scotland which is probably forgotten about sometimes but it’s a lovely corner of Scotland for wildlife Amazing, I look forward to that very much and thank you for your time, it’s been really, really interesting Thank you Thank you Arts Against Mental Illness