Robert Macfarlane : Is a River Alive?

Don’t miss today’s conversation with Robert Macfarlane. A polyvocal deep dive into the mysteries of words and rivers, of speech acts as spells, whorls as worlds, of grammars of animacy, of what it means to river, and to be rivered. From the Epic of Gilgamesh to Virginia Woolf’s wave in the mind to Ursula K. Le Guin’s fellow feeling to Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s notion of theory as embodied and  kinetic, we look at the role of the imagination, language and the body in reorienting ourselves to a world alive with us beholden to it. And we look to the water defenders and language revivers as part of together dreaming an otherwise.

The bonus audio archive contains many contributions from people mentioned today, from Alice Oswald to Natalie Diaz to Jorie Graham to Richard Powers. To learn more about how to subscribe to the supplementary material, and about all the potential benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community, head over to the show’s Patreon page.

Finally, here is the BookShop for today’s conversation.