Helios 3: Rebecca Sharp's Rough Currency

12 Min Read

August 23, 2021

Helios is an EH interview series about new research in the energy humanities and the creative processes that bring it to life.

Our third installment features Scottish poet and playwright Rebecca Sharp, whose interdisciplinary work explores ideas of landscape and place across artforms. In her new poetry pamphlet, Rough Currency, Sharp plumbs our personal and collective entanglements with fossil fuels with an eye for the mythic and the magical. A selection of her work is featured in The Art of Energy exhibition at the Centre for Energy Ethics, where it won second prize in the inaugural Art of Energy Award.

EH editors Imre Szeman and Caleb Wellum sat down with Rebecca over Zoom on June 25 to talk about her poetic process during a pandemic, why she wanted to write about oil, and how poetry can help us to see the world differently so that we might change it.

Click the download link below to read the full interview.

Download the interview
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.

Read More

October 31, 2023

Daniel Macfarlane

Historian Daniel Macfarlane introduces his new book, Natural Allies: Environment, Energy, and the History of US-Canada Relations from McGill-Queen's University Press. The book shows that the Canada-U.S. energy/environmental relationship is historically the most consequential in the world, spawning important changes in international environmental law and transboundary governance, while also fostering the voracious consumption of resources and and large-scale ecosystem change. In addition to analyzing this history, Macfarlane offers the concept of "natural security" as a potential guide to international environmental agreements and pathways.

Read
November 16, 2022

Misty Matthews-Roper

Climate fiction stories, sometimes known as "cli-fi", have captured the imagination of writers and their readers. But it isn't yet clear if reading dramatic narratives about climate change can or will translate into action. Amidst a significant push for new narratives to shift climate anxiety into action, researcher Misty Matthews-Roper has turned to book clubs to understand the social power of reading cli-fi. She reports on her preliminary findings about how social reading can create meaningful conversations about how to live and respond to the ongoing climate crisis.

Read
all articles