Like Wordsworth and Coleridge before him, Dr Kevan Manwaring finds inspiration for his writing in the natural world around him. And despite the struggles the environment faces, his enthusiasm for encouraging that inspiration in others has not wavered…
Kevan’s appreciation for “the beauty of nature” began early in life, when he would take his dog on daily walks. The local park and his love for trees, oaks in particular, became his sanctuary, his asylum. A place where he could escape for some headspace and hear himself think.
“It’s where I first started to become a writer, because I started to use my imagination,” he says. “I was interested in the local history – the place was saturated in stories – but I always knew there was something very special about nature. It always offended me to see litter anywhere. Why would people do that when they have this beauty? Why spoil it?”
His love only grew as he experienced more of England, including West Dorset, but also Wales and Ireland. But at what point did it become the foundation for his practice as a creative writer?
“I’ve always been inspired by landscape and the narratives of place. I remember going on a hiking trip around Cornwall and getting really inspired by all the little coves and groves and bits of folklore. Wherever I went, I would start to write poetry about it. I started writing poetry before getting into storytelling, and again, a lot of that is about place. Many folk tales are set around a particular place or explain how a place came to be. A local landmark like Commerce Hill, or the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland. And I love how stories can explain where we live, or at least situate us in that environment. Give us a sense of literacy and communication within it.”
Kevan reminisces on the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, when news started to come through about the ozone layer and other environmental issues. It was then that his concern for the natural world grew, including the Amazon Rainforest and whales. Providing new environmental and ecological focal points for his writing.
“I wasn’t just writing something with a nice landscape or countryside backdrop,” he explains. “I was writing stuff that tried to articulate something about how precious our environment was.
“A lot of my poems were protest poems about saving various things. Then my stories started to develop that ecoliteracy as well.”
20 years ago, Kevan ran a course on creative writing and the environment, which resulted in the anthology Writing the Land, and with it, the founding of his small press Awen Publications. And this year, from Bridport, West Dorset, he ran a series of Writing and Wellbeing walks and workshops for the locals.
I joined for the first leg of their walk down to West Bay, famously a shooting location for the crime drama Broadchurch. From the picturesque Buckydoo Square, the group’s meeting point, the first 10-15 minutes of the walk took me, as a writer, across a tightrope between the rural and the urban. The community orchard, with its trees still dormant awaiting spring. And then the riverside path, with a water mill on one side, and one of the country’s longest murals on the other.
Fast-forward to my arrival on the shingle of West Bay. As Kevan encourages his students to look to the coastline for inspiration for their next exercise, my curiosity is piqued.
Bearing in mind how notoriously the environment is changing, have the ways in which it inspires creative writers shifted too? Kevan explains:
“There’s this movement called New Nature Writing, which really started in the Noughties. Some absolute classics were generated in the earlier, more traditional iterations of nature writing. But now, I don’t think you can write anything about nature without some acknowledgement of climate change, environmental issues, all the panoply of environmental issues that we are faced with. It’s not just climate change; it’s habitat loss, biodiversity, the acidifications of the oceans."
"The best new nature writing is a hybrid of travel writing, nature writing and memoir – that’s far more interesting and I encourage my students to do that sort of writing."
“People have their own associations about places or experiences. When we go down to West Bay, people will have their own memories of the seaside – good and bad. Sometimes people have an antipathy towards nature, which I always find surprising. When I’ve dragged my students out on field trips, most of them absolutely love it, and they always say it’s the absolute highlight of the unit I teach. But there are some that – initially, at least – will go, ‘It’s a bit cold… I don’t want to go… why are you dragging us up the hill, Kevan?’ But then they really do get something out of it, and I’ve been surprised again and again by what people have written.”
Now, carrying shoefuls of shingle, I ask Kevan for his closing One Piece of Advice.
“Go for a walk with a pen. Paul Klee, the artist, used to say, ‘Take the line for a walk.’ This idea of going for a walk with your notebook and just noticing things. Writing is first and foremost an act of perception; a way of seeing and being in the world. Unless you’re noticing things, you don’t have anything to write about. Slow down, spend time anywhere… it doesn’t have to be in nature."
"Notice the little details, make some notes, be a peoplewatcher, be curious about the world. Write down words, phrases, eavesdrop on bits of conversation, place names, street names… anything. Just go out there and don’t be too attached to the outcome.”
