This year’s Blue Metropolis was a celebration of Dreams & Utopias, a theme that took centre stage at last Friday evening’s panel, Inner and Outer Landscapes in a Changing World, located in downtown’s Hotel 10.
Hosted by former CBC journalist Paul Kennedy, the hour-long talk featured Italian particle physicist and novelist Paulo Giordano (Tasmania) and British explorer, nature writer, and essayist Robert Macfarlane (Underland), who was also winner of this year’s Blue Metropolis Planet Literature Prize.
Exploring themes of landscape, literature, and everyday living, the panel looked at what it means to be a writer in an age of climate change—and whether literature can elevate the crisis out of the mundane and into the spotlight. Using passages from their work as well as insights from their research and travels, both writers discussed the beauty and fragility of our natural world as well as our place within it.
By bringing together distinct yet complementary approaches (fiction versus non-fiction, old definitions versus new challenges, inner versus outer landscapes), the panel provided the audience with a rich and deeply thoughtful look at the power literature at a time when all other cries to heed our world fall short.
Inner and Outer Landscapes in a Changing World was followed by a Q&A session, and both authors were available to meet guests at the festival bookstore for book signings and discussions about their work.
Books by Paulo Giordano and Robert Macfarlane can be found at official Blue Met bookstore Paragraphe.
