Launch of Dark Mountain: Issue 29 – Bestiary

*This event has now passed, but you can watch the recording from the event below*

You are invited to join us for an online celebration of our twenty-ninth issue – a book entirely about animals.

The word ‘deer’, from the Old English dēor, originally referred to any animal that was free and undomesticated. The ‘wilderness’, or ‘wild deerness’, was where the wild ones lived. We would like to welcome you to the wild deerness.

The more-than-human – and the wild deerness in all its forms – has always been at the heart of Dark Mountain, but this is the first anthology we’ve devoted to the animal world. This book takes its inspiration from medieval bestiaries, but unlike those ancient compendiums doesn’t claim to be anything like representative. Nor does it reduce animals to moral cyphers. Instead, it presents a kaleidoscopic view, like the multiple images seen through an insect’s compound eye, fragmentary pictures that are chaotic and unordered – but which, perhaps, approximate the plurality of the world better than any abstract system can.

In these pages you will find a talking eel; a desert salamander who breathes through its skin; a mysterious time-travelling embroidered bird; a convocation of eagles; the earthy, bloody life of a forest jaguar in Brazil; feral dogs in the Galápagos; pigeons, as related to by a man experiencing homelessness; a letter to a crow; the brood-song of a bee colony; bears encountered in dreaming practices and bears that are dangerously close and real; wombats; woodmouse; spiders; jellyfish; and five dancing salmon.

We invite you to walk, crawl, slither, swim and fly through the wild deerness of these pages, and to give yourself the gift, in our darkening world, of imagining what it’s like to be anything other than human.

Do join us for the online launch on Wednesday 22nd April at 8pm BST to hear from some of the artists and writers who have contributed to this book from around the world.

Tickets are free, but you’ll need to book a place on Eventbrite.

Dark Mountain: Issue 29 will be published on 15th April.

A Zoom link will be sent two days before the event.

Hope to see you there!