Over a decade ago two British writers looked at the course of human history, our use of technology, our species’ self-absorption. They issued a manifesto.
Together, we are walking away from the stories that our societies like to tell themselves, the stories that prevent us seeing clearly the extent of the ecological, social and cultural unravelling that is now underway. We are making art that doesn’t take the centrality of humans for granted.
It is widely recognized that the chosen poet laureate of Dark Mountain and its adherents is Robinson Jeffers who spent his adult lifetime writing on the edge of North America–Carmel, California. Jeffers was clear that humans were too absorbed in their self-assumed importance, chosen species, etc. etc. Some of his great poems are now decades old. In an intro to one of his anthologies he wrote about our species self-destructive insanity:
I can only add, look at the species name we have given ourselves–Homo sapiens. I have yet to be surprised by this supposed sapiens, how about you?
Tor House, where Una and Robinson Jeffers lived for decades together:
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