Image: Tara Donovan Untitled (Mylar) © Steve Russell
Welcome to Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature’s 11th edition. In this issue we turn our attention to ECOLOGY: from the word’s earliest roots—in one’s immediate surroundings; to present-day ecologies which span people, organisms, systems, and worlds.
The word ‘ecology’ comes from the late 19th cent. oecology, from Greek oikos ‘house.’ Noun 1. The branch of biology that deals with the relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings. 2. The political movement concerned with protection of the environment.
Work follows in the footsteps of John Muir, Rebecca Solnit, and others who have addressed social and environmental concerns—at a time when more than 70% of the world’s biodiversity has been lost within just 50 years. Authors demonstrate our capacity for care, spirituality, and connection with biological systems that surround us as and upon which we depend, as well as an equal capacity to destroy, destruct, spill.
Ecology & Conservation Editor Julia Knights talks to world-leading tree expert Tony Kirkham on a lifetime spent in arboriculture and tree management. Photographer Anderson Schneider takes us on a contrasting journey deep into the Amazon basin as miners desperately search for newfound gold. We have film scripts, soundscapes, art moving images, and a haibun. BAFTA-winning screenwriter Toby Venables shares a dark and harrowing eco-fable in “Greenwood.” Robin McLean’s vividly written “Cold Snap” provides a survival story that long lingers in the memory.
Thanks, as always, to Editors—Faith Adiele, Vimi Bajaj, Marie Baleo, Nicolas D. Sampson, Paula Lee, Kerry Neville, Joelle Renstrom, Samuel Autman, Kevan Manwaring, Anis Ibrahim, Tolu Daniel— those already mentioned, the wider masthead, and all who contribute each issue.
Panorama’s expanding ecology of writers and writing now includes Amanda Barnsley White who joins as Poetry Editor, alongside Senior Poetry Editors Devi S. Laskar and David Ishaya Osu. Flash sections see new leadership under Paula Read and Kristen Winet. Tanya Ward Goodman confirms her role as a Nonfiction Editor. It’s wonderful to see people coming back into the fold too. Katrina Woznicki returns with what will be an ongoing column from LA. In “It Can Be Beautiful for Everyone,” we see downtown Tinseltown in a very different light. Ian Woollen is also back with “Emergency Alert.”
Wandering Editor Dato Magradze weaves together the rise and fall of dynasties, modern security apparatus, religion and war in “Special Operation”—a recent euphemism for invading one’s neighbour—while the battlefield emerges again in “Legion:” Steve Russell’s review of the latest British Museum show as part of a wider focus on London museums ecology which features empire, contemporary artworks, and textiles. Devi Laskar, meanwhile, reflects on pipelines and politicians in “Self-Portrait,” and in so doing, holds a looking glass up to us all. I hope you enjoy the wide variety of thoughtful responses to the theme. I give you ECOLOGY.
— Matthew Webb, Director, Panorama
Anderson Schneider
Brazil
In the last days of December 2006, news that gold had been found in the Juma basin quickly spread throughout the Amazon, attracting men and women to the middle of nowhere, under the almost irresistible promise of a better life.
Within a few weeks, the rumour had spread throughout the country and more than 8,000 people had amassed in the region, quickly transforming what was once a forest into a gigantic hole in the middle of the forest made of mud, disease, exploitation and dreams of easy riches.
People came from all over Brazil in what became the biggest gold rush since Serra Pelada in the 1980s. Very few became rich, some found gold, but everyone else found only the cruel, savage working conditions of mining.
They discovered at the cost of their own blood, sweat and tears how dark a dream can be.
SCREENWRITING
BOOKS
ECOLOGY & CONSERVATION
Remarkable Trees: Biodiversity Economic Botany
Julia Knights
UK
Following the UN’s International Day of the Forest on the 21st March, Julia Knights spoke to Tony Kirkham, one of the world’s leading experts on trees to learn more about his work, life and book Remarkable Trees.
NONFICTION
EATEN
MEMOIR
DECOLONISING TRAVEL
FICTION
TRAVEL FLASH
FLASH FICTION
POETRY
NEW NATURE WRITING
