{"id":806,"date":"2020-11-22T18:02:46","date_gmt":"2020-11-22T18:02:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/more.bham.ac.uk\/artsofplace\/?p=806"},"modified":"2022-01-18T12:11:01","modified_gmt":"2022-01-18T12:11:01","slug":"difficult-paradises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/more.bham.ac.uk\/artsofplace\/articles\/difficult-paradises\/","title":{"rendered":"Difficult Paradises"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For our &#8216;Monday Conversation&#8217; on 26th October 2020, we welcomed Tim Dee, Michael Malay, and Liam Olds.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Stranger, turn back again, frustrate and vexed:\u00a0<\/strong><b><br \/>\n<strong>This land, cut off, will not communicate &#8230;<\/strong><\/b><br \/>\n(W.H. Auden, The Watershed)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In our\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/gmail.us18.list-manage.com\/track\/click?u=2fffe81594d651bc67cc87a36&amp;id=9058ccf470&amp;e=87af6aab0c\">newsletter<\/a>, Michael Malay (English, University of Bristol) wrote about natural renewal on the sites of coal spoils and wondered about the role of writers in responding to such \u2018difficult paradises\u2019. To pursue these questions, Michael was joined online by entomologist Liam Olds (founder of the Colliery Spoil Biodiversity Initiative) and by Tim Dee, widely considered one of our greatest living nature writers. Tim\u2019s book Landfill is (in the words of Helen Macdonald) \u2018a deep meditation on difficulty and waste, on the beauty of the disregarded, and on what we make of matter out of place\u2019.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>In this decayed hole among the mountains<br \/>\n<\/strong><strong>In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing&#8230;<\/strong><strong><br \/>\n<\/strong>(T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Difficult Paradises - Arts of Place network\" width=\"905\" height=\"509\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/kghpW9FiaXU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Conversation: Tim Dee, Michael Malay, and Liam Olds ask what beauty means in the context of ecological renewal. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":129,"featured_media":1358,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,22,93],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-806","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-articles","8":"category-essays","9":"category-featured","11":"with-featured-image"},"featured_image_urls_v2":{"full":["https:\/\/more.bham.ac.uk\/artsofplace\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2020\/11\/Colliery-Spoil-1.jpg",610,406,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/more.bham.ac.uk\/artsofplace\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2020\/11\/Colliery-Spoil-1-300x300.jpg",300,300,true],"medium":["https:\/\/more.bham.ac.uk\/artsofplace\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2020\/11\/Colliery-Spoil-1-450x300.jpg",450,300,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/more.bham.ac.uk\/artsofplace\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2020\/11\/Colliery-Spoil-1.jpg",610,406,false],"large":["https:\/\/more.bham.ac.uk\/artsofplace\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2020\/11\/Colliery-Spoil-1.jpg",610,406,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/more.bham.ac.uk\/artsofplace\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2020\/11\/Colliery-Spoil-1.jpg",610,406,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/more.bham.ac.uk\/artsofplace\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2020\/11\/Colliery-Spoil-1.jpg",610,406,false],"ab-block-post-grid-landscape":["https:\/\/more.bham.ac.uk\/artsofplace\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2020\/11\/Colliery-Spoil-1-600x400.jpg",600,400,true],"ab-block-post-grid-square":["https:\/\/more.bham.ac.uk\/artsofplace\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2020\/11\/Colliery-Spoil-1-600x406.jpg",600,406,true],"atomic-blocks-featured-image":["https:\/\/more.bham.ac.uk\/artsofplace\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2020\/11\/Colliery-Spoil-1.jpg",610,406,false],"atomic-blocks-featured-image-wide":["https:\/\/more.bham.ac.uk\/artsofplace\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2020\/11\/Colliery-Spoil-1.jpg",610,406,false],"atomic-blocks-logo":["https:\/\/more.bham.ac.uk\/artsofplace\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2020\/11\/Colliery-Spoil-1-300x200.jpg",300,200,true]},"post_excerpt_stackable_v2":"<p>Conversation: Tim Dee, Michael Malay, and Liam Olds ask what beauty means in the context of ecological renewal. <\/p>\n","category_list_v2":"<a href=\"https:\/\/more.bham.ac.uk\/artsofplace\/category\/articles\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Articles<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/more.bham.ac.uk\/artsofplace\/category\/essays\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Essays<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/more.bham.ac.uk\/artsofplace\/category\/featured\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Featured posts<\/a>","author_info_v2":{"name":"Alexandra Harris","url":"https:\/\/more.bham.ac.uk\/artsofplace\/author\/harrisaz\/"},"comments_num_v2":"0 comments","featured_image_src":"https:\/\/more.bham.ac.uk\/artsofplace\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2020\/11\/Colliery-Spoil-1-600x400.jpg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/more.bham.ac.uk\/artsofplace\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2020\/11\/Colliery-Spoil-1-600x406.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"Alexandra Harris","author_link":"https:\/\/more.bham.ac.uk\/artsofplace\/author\/harrisaz\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/more.bham.ac.uk\/artsofplace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/more.bham.ac.uk\/artsofplace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/more.bham.ac.uk\/artsofplace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/more.bham.ac.uk\/artsofplace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/129"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/more.bham.ac.uk\/artsofplace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=806"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/more.bham.ac.uk\/artsofplace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1190,"href":"https:\/\/more.bham.ac.uk\/artsofplace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806\/revisions\/1190"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/more.bham.ac.uk\/artsofplace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/more.bham.ac.uk\/artsofplace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/more.bham.ac.uk\/artsofplace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/more.bham.ac.uk\/artsofplace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}