Introducing Dark Mountain: Issue 6 (and beyond)

is the co-founder of the Dark Mountain Project, of which he was director from 2009-2017, He is the author of nine books - three novels, two poetry collections and four works of non-fiction - all of which, it turns out, tell the same story: how we walked away from the wild world, and how we might get home again, if we can. He runs the Wyrd School which teaches wild writing and art and lives in the west of Ireland.
The sixth issue of Dark Mountain arrived from the printers a few days ago. As you can see, it is already being hungrily consumed by the target audience. Part of the attraction in this case may be the wonderful, and incredibly colourful, cover illustration by Eunah Cho. It’s quite a departure from our previous covers. But then, you could probably have said the same about any one of them.
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Our sixth anthology of uncivilised writing and art is a 270-page hardback, containing 42 essays, stories and poems, and 16 colour plates. This is the most visual issue of Dark Mountain to date: under the guidance of our art editor, Charlotte Du Cann, the photographs, etchings, sketchings and illustrations of all kinds creep from those plates and across the pages of the book. As text and images intermingle, they conjure up lordly dragons, corn masks, fire burials, water proverbs, Zen meditations, vignettes on technology, thoughts about farming, home made rafts, toxic squirrels, flocks of parrots, false windows, six deserts, seven coats, drowned cities and protest poems.

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If you’re a Dark Mountain subscriber, your copy of the new book is already making its way through the postal system and should reach you any day now.

Otherwise, you can order it from today through our online shop – or if you take out a subscription for future issues, you can get our two most recent issues for the price of one. Your support will also help to secure the long-term future of the project. If you’re interested, visit our subscriptions page to find out more.

 

ISSUE 7 – A CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Dark Mountain now produces two books a year: one in April and one in October. As this book hits the streets, we’re already starting to think about the next one. So this blog post is also an invitation for submissions for Dark Mountain: Issue 7.

With each book, we seek to go deeper into the questions that have animated this project since we published our manifesto five years ago. We are looking for writing and art which pushes the boundaries, which unsettles the assumptions many of us grew up with and the ways we are used to looking at the world, which challenges the stories our civilisation tells itself. We don’t care who you are or whether you have ever been published before. We encourage new writers and artists, and new involvement from all over the world, especially from the parts of the world our books have not yet reached.

To find out more about the kind of thing we are looking for, and how to submit to us, have a look at our submissions guidelines. The deadline for submissions is 15th of December 2014.

Meanwhile, we hope you enjoy Issue 6 as much as we have enjoyed bringing it to you.

Comments
  1. Big congratulations!! Can’t wait to see it. The cover is amazing and so are those children. Do you know them, by chance?

  2. Yes Julie, the sprogs are mine. They were genuinely interested in the book too, which is always refreshing 🙂

    Please do spread the word about submissions for the next book also, and I hope you all enjoy this one.

    1. Any specific theme for Issue 7? Or will anything addressing the general Dark Mountain interests and manifesto work? Thanks. Issue 6 is wonderful!

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