Led by Director and Chief Exec, Matthew Webb, over 120 editors, writers, and other contributors including Troy Onyango, Faith Adiele, Nicolas D. Sampson, Marie Baleo, Anne Louise Avery, Richard Ali, Robin Hemley, make Panorama possible.
...I got into travel writing accidentally: it’s not something I intended to do, but a series of circumstances happened which made me into a travel writer. But from the start, I found the genre lacking: it seemed controlled by narratives which were rife with exoticism, commercialism, and outdated perspectives. I realised there was room for lots of different approaches to travel writing, but I wondered what travel literature made up the backbone of the genre.
...Rain drops roll down my face,
freedom is so close,
when rain encourages you to live,
the whole universe is your building plot.
Frontiers of every country disappear,
no...
Welcome to Panorama‘s first Quarterly Issue. Our purpose is to shift the perspective of travel literature and imagery towards a more panoramic, modern worldview, and we have chosen the theme of firsts to take you on a revolutionary journey through travel-themed fiction, poetry, imagery, essays, and memoir.
...“We travel in our adventure every day. It is almost impossible to place a line of the demarcation between the real journey and the imaginative one.”
...Welcome to Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature’s DAWN issue. This bright, awakening, and challenging composition comprises a multitude of world views, places, and experiences. We explore new beginnings, transitions, dawnings, and realisations. New landscapes are explored. New places ventured. New experiences, in familiar environs, are retold. New is often seen as positive, yet change is often more complex, and we look at this too. With our return comes an expanded scope. Whilst retaining a core travel emphasis, we have added ‘place’ and ‘nature.’ Essays in Panorama have always been place-based but this increased focus on the natural world opens up new avenues to explore. With this in mind, we have added a new Ecology & Conservation Editor, Julia Knights, who uses this first issue to speak with world-leading botanist Ghillean Prance. The result is an enlightening and frightening conversation about the Amazon rainforest.
...To the luminous memory
of Georgia’s great writer,
Otar Chkheidze,
who gave us,
along with other masterpieces,
the translation of The Waste Land by T.S.Eliot.
Hello? Can’t hear you,
your voice – comes and goes
network connection is lousy
the signal weak – I’m at the meeting.
Hold on, there’s a babel of voices
all talking...
Welcome to Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature’s SPACE issue. From the very small to the enormity of our imaginations, essays grow from the furtive earth-bed of mushroom forests to the stars. Granville Carroll’s afro-futuristic cover artwork “Becoming” places us in space. John Angerson provides the obligatory rocket-propelled photos. Matilde Gattoni reminds us that one’s freedom to explore space can suddenly be taken away. The connection with space doesn’t stop there. Melissa Tuckman’s aptly titled poem “Space Junk” connects space debris to modern living. A new section on New Nature Writing probes the world beyond our urban confines. In the second outing for Decolonising Travel, there are excruciating, painful stories, sexual imaginings in the steam room, and personal reflections on historical ties to oppression; all whilst giving writers who have come through VONA/Faith Adiele’s writing programme space to share their work. We finish the issue with a stroll through London — the most ethnically diverse world capital — through the lens of Books Editor Nicolas D. Sampson.
...Whisky and a shop window
– Thanks, Marriott!
The gloomy, excited crowd passes by
and recalls to me Goya’s blackest period
and the lethargic mind that begot a...