Meadowbook
Will be published approx. on 8. April 2027
Book
Paperback/Softback
978-1-0676939-6-1 (ISBN)
Description
Meadowbook is restless overgrowth in the lyric domain: an ecopoetic experiment, a cross-pollination of forms, an impossible arcadia for the digital age. A narrator finds herself impregnated by a tree, a group of friends conduct psychedelic eclogues at Ponyhenge, Bambi is revamped as trauma response for internet coquettes, grasses grow, balloons released.
Poet-scholar Maria Sledmere explores the cultural mediation of 'nature', the deep entanglements of human and nonhuman animals, plants, and trees; it seeks commoning in blogs and nightclubs, glitches cottagecore's bucolic kitsch, and sings earnestly and yearningly for a gentler world. Blending the intimacy of a pillow book with the rigour of a fractal field guide, this collection channels the emotional currents of climate crisis as they resonate through language and the body.
Meadowbook asks: what does it mean to think with the meadow as a real and abstract ecosystem? A made place, an inner place, an im/possible outside to the endless ensnaring of techno-capitalism?
Poet-scholar Maria Sledmere explores the cultural mediation of 'nature', the deep entanglements of human and nonhuman animals, plants, and trees; it seeks commoning in blogs and nightclubs, glitches cottagecore's bucolic kitsch, and sings earnestly and yearningly for a gentler world. Blending the intimacy of a pillow book with the rigour of a fractal field guide, this collection channels the emotional currents of climate crisis as they resonate through language and the body.
Meadowbook asks: what does it mean to think with the meadow as a real and abstract ecosystem? A made place, an inner place, an im/possible outside to the endless ensnaring of techno-capitalism?
More details
Person
Maria Sledmere is the author of over 20 books of poetry, fiction and criticism. Raised in South Ayrshire, Scotland, she is Senior Lecturer in English & Creative Writing at the University of Strathclyde and has a DFA in Creative Writing from the University of Glasgow. She has published in multiple forms, from poetry and fiction to oneiric memoir and experimental monograph, and collaborated with artists and musicians including Jack O'Flynn, David Horvitz, Kevin Leomo, and Lanark Artefax. Maria is managing editor of SPAM Press and one half of Project Somnolence: a portable lab for exploring sleep across art, literature, and daily life. She is a former member of A+E Collective and has taught practice-led workshops with partner organisations including the87press, Beyond Form Creative Writing, Scottish Graduate School of Arts and Humanities, the Alasdair Gray Archive, The New Bridge Project and Edwin Morgan Trust.