Adam Sébire, Michelle Elvy, Susan Wardell and Susie Johnston in dialogue with our art, our world and each other.
This conversation was inspired by the Energy in Motion conference co-curated by Susan Wardell as a UNESCO City of Literature partnered event, connecting Edinburgh, Ōtepoti and the world. Susan and Michelle entered the conversation with Adam and Susie, starting with the micro and expanding outwards into myriad possibilities of expression in our age of multiple crises. Each of them works in solitude yet finds inspiration through collaboration and conversation.
Below, a sampling of their recent works.
ADAM
anthropoScene XII: a work-in-progress a.k.a. Iceberg care (2024)
https://www.adamsebire.info/the-works/anthroposcenes/#anthropoScene12
Ilulissap eqqaa (a Kalaalisut term for the area surrounding an iluliaq or iceberg) is a dangerous place to be since the sea ice here is fragile and the bergs, eroded from below by warm water, can overturn without warning. Belying their monolithic appearance, icebergs are in constant transformation – by wind, current, solar radiation, precipitation, and now, by manmade climate change.
How might we find ways of being & existing within the ‘Anthropocene’? Ratification of this contentious proposal – marking a geological epoch characterised by human disruption of the Earth System – was due in mid-2024. However, it was unexpectedly ‘put on ice’ by scientists unable to agree on what event best marked its beginning. But could this administrative anomaly be a small part of some larger rupture in Western narratives that describe our relationship to the non-human world? As we move from mindsets of consumption & exploitation towards an ethos of cooperation & planetary stewardship?
Prising open conceptions of ‘nature’ sufficiently to accommodate more symbiotic and collaborative approaches with(in) it – as suggested by environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht’s Symbiocene proposal – is likely to be a long and, like my iceberg cleaning, clumsy and imperfect ‘work-in-progress’.
SUSIE
COLUMNA
Columna 2025. Repurposed worn pointe shoes, found lamp stand. 1.83m x 30cm x 5cm
Columna, a poem
suspending the unbearable burden of adolescence
fleetingly above the deafening pink noise
syndromes of imposters arrive with their decadence
vertebrae unfurl, one by one, to poise
vulnerability whispers sweet nothings in her ear
suspending the unbearable burden of adolescence
a huge bag of worries lugged around with fear
syndromes of imposters arrive with their decadence
cancelled by cultures whilst the virus possesses
vulnerability whispers sweet nothings in her ear
be strong, be flexible but with not a hint of stresses
the tyranny of weight lifts, whilst shedding a tear
in confidence and uncertainty this column towers
cancelled by cultures whilst the virus possesses
joints ache and tendons strain to catch the flowers
be strong, be flexible but with not a hint of stresses
standing above the pink noise, she tells a new story
in confidence and uncertainty this column towers
there’s strength in numbers, 33 fragments in all their glory
joints ache and tendons strain to catch the flowers
the luminous presence of each head reckoned
standing above the pink noise, she tells a new story
of dancing with no cares or imposters, for a split second
there’s strength in numbers, 33 fragments in all their glory
syndromes of imposters leave with their decadence
suspending the unbearable burden of adolescence
there’s strength in numbers, 33 fragments in all their glory
standing above the pink noise, she tells her new story
FLEX
JOIN
FUSE
BEND
HOLD
SNAP
CURL
MOVE
STAND
TWIST
PRESS
PINCH
BREAK
RESIST
CRACK
TOUCH
CURVE
REACH
BULGE
CRUSH
SPRAIN
ROTATE
EXTEND
STRETCH
PROTECT
BALANCE
SUPPORT
FRACTURE
L E N G T H E N
SUSAN
Ikateq
Greenland
She opens her eyes as an iceberg glides by. It is not a dream. Dried fish are hanging, swinging from a rusted ladder beside her. They have no smell, in the way of dreams. The captain has his head stuck out of the window, smoking a pipe.
Her skin is bare, radiating with hope. No, that bit is a dream. Really, she peers out from layers of micro-fleece. No room to take it all in. This shining giant. It groans as they glide by, so near she could have reached out to run her fingers over its body.
They arrive at the village of Ikateq: a rocky outcrop, population zero. The white flowers of a Greenland spring wave like soft unspoken snow.
She wanders past empty fish racks, eying the water for the ghosts of fish, towing people in their salt wake. Inside a small wooden shed, she finds a bushel of white birds hanging by their feet. Abandoned. Preserved. Eyes shut and wings reaching.
She flees over the hill, descends into a cove filled with the thousand voices of ice. Singing, knocking, clicking. Tired little sighs; the creaking of age and submission.
She leans over to capture a piece in hastily shucked hands. Then presses it to her mouth. Or is that part of the dream? Her desiccated lips, and the ice frictionless, edgeless, its shape lost to her even as she tries to know it.
They depart Ikateq.
She stays awake this time, smoke in her nose, watching the south-bound stream of icebergs parting like Edwardian pairs around the boat’s grim little holt. Watching mist soften the thin salt membrane of the sea, veil all the places where whales might dip up into her dream before descending again to navigate their own inverse mountains. She does not blink.
First published in Love in the Time of COVID
The grief of bees – 2022 National Flash Fiction Day Short List
It was after the smoke had cleared. We had become used to soot lodged under our claws; not a fine graphite powder, but a gritty hot charcoal that tasted acidic. Despite this, the haze was lifting and there was such a thing as blue again. It was under a patch of this that we encountered the grief of bees.
We met them first as the sound of a distant ocean. The hum was not so sharp as we had been led to believe. We entered the clearing curiously. We met them then as a visible wind – got lost in its semiotics for a moment or ten thousand – a spiral, a spout, a face made of fifty-thousand bodies in motion, and showing no sign of settling.
Someone – not us, but a human – once wrote that the bee isn’t the organism, but rather the hive is. It was a warning, I think, to scale your mourning against small losses. This was useless, that day, as we watched the distress of that one organism spiraling out from the last swatch of green, the last cluster of pale-fringed blossom, in the whole blackened forest.
We lay down at their feet, then: myself and the other orphans. We asked them to pierce our tired skin, to help us to rest at last. But they were uninterested in death (which is different to grief after all) and eventually we stood – licked helplessly at the dew-less grass, nosed at brickle leaves – and then left.
Who can tell why we walked away so willingly? There was no room for anything else under that burning blue eye, but the grief of bees. So we left, treading each on our own individual pain; walking, walking, in the clear air, with all the world’s ash at our feet.
First published in Flash Frontier
MICHELLE
Antarctica
The man finds the boy in a drainpipe and when he asks him what are you doing in there? the boy looks at him as if he should already know and says I’m looking for Antarctica. Later at home, the man’s wife catches him staring at the tiny specks of dust spiralling in the late-afternoon sun and when she asks What are you thinking? for about the millionth time he hates her but he also knows he’d hate it even more if she stopped asking so he shrugs and says I’m thinking about Antarctica.
He goes back the next day and the boy is gone. He waits for him because he knows there’s something they needed to say but forgot. The sky is heavy metallic: the hour before snowfall. He pulls his collar tight and heads home and when he gets there his wife’s standing naked in the kitchen. It has started to snow and the only colour in the room is the orange of her fingernails. The snow falls and they can’t get warm, no matter how hard they make love. Later he’s staring again and his wife says Antarctica? but how could she know he’s more than a million miles away with the boy in the drainpipe.
He returns to the drainpipe and crouches down on his hands and knees. His shoulders barely fit but he wedges himself in. He is about to turn and crawl down the pipe, all the way to a new continent, when a stranger walks by and sees him and when he asks what are you doing in there? the man looks at the stranger as if he should already know.
First published in SmokeLong Quarterly, and as the opening story in the hybrid collection the other side of better
I am thinking of the trees
I am thinking of the great cedar in front of my house
the feeling of flying with pīwakawaka, tauhou and tūī
when I gaze out the second-storey window high
on the hill
I am thinking of the drone views of fires that started
the year, orange sky over brown slopes, animals scurrying
to safety among 23,000 acres aflame in LA’s surrounds
I am thinking of the idea of refuge
I am thinking of our Aotearoa spaces, the National Parks
Act of 1980 that saw natural beauty as something worth
reserving, as something of ‘national interest’
I am thinking of US public lands, some 28% of this vast
terrain, area declared protected and out of reach
of human avarice
I am thinking of the idea of refuge
I am thinking of the 20,000 rangers and the fragility
of their jobs, people working for the Everglades, the
Smoky Mountains and Zion National Park, named
for the idea of refuge
I am thinking of the idea of refuge
I am thinking of scientists at Fish and Wildlife whose work
is to see things we don’t see every day, of civil servants
whose job is to serve our planet in ways we may not
consider from our comfortable homes
I am thinking of the rare beetles and spiders who have little
protection now, of the black-footed ferret, endangered
with no voice of its own, of spotted owls and silent manatee,
of little birds found only in tropical forests in Hawai‘i,
of the grizzly and grey wolf, their majesty disregarded
I am thinking of the idea of refuge
I am thinking of the lumber company exec who manages
our forests, of the new order to log two-hundred-eighty-
million acres
I am thinking of Thoreau; I am thinking we can never have
enough nature
I am thinking of the discarded safety measures founded
in the US Endangered Species Act, granting protection for
more than half a century, but if a tree falls in a forest
we cannot protect, do we hear the sound?
I am thinking of the great cedar outside my window,
guarded under Aotearoa law, a haven for small souls
I am thinking of the idea of refuge
I am thinking of Robin Wall Kimmerer and a life
of reciprocity, of Mary Oliver eating the fish
I am thinking of Wendell Berry, poet citizen farmer
living for the land
I am thinking of what Selina said Hone said
I am thinking of the idea of refuge
I am thinking of the orphan bear cub, saved by Taoseño
from wildfire and nursed back to health, Smokey the new
symbol of forest fire prevention, living a long and protected
life – I met him when I was a kid, on a field trip to the National Zoo
I am thinking of the idea of refuge
I am thinking of Ursula Bethell’s Pause hanging over
my desk, of Brian Turner, wild hearts and Wild Dunedin
I am thinking of land as a poem and the language of Joy
Harjo with her horses
I am thinking of John Muir and how to reach the universe
through forest wilderness
I am thinking of the idea of refuge
I am thinking of protection, I am thinking of safety
I am thinking of the rumble of words on the page
I am thinking of how to see the forest and the trees
I am thinking of the idea of refuge
I am thinking of Gilgamesh cutting down the biggest cedar
I am thinking of that ancient story, how great trees fall
and walls rise
First published at Poetry Shelf, April 2025
Michelle Elvy is a writer and editor in Ōtepoti Dunedin, Aotearoa New Zealand. Her books are the everrumble and the other side of better, and her latest series of poetry explores current political, climate and social crises that have intensified in 2025, in her series of ‘Dispatch poems’ at Poetry Shelf. Later this year she is finishing two new hybrid collections thanks to the Mike Riddell Residency in Oturehua and the Auckland Regional Parks Residency in Huia.
Susie Johnston is a visual artist based in Perth, Scotland, working between the disciplines of sculpture, painting, and installation. She has exhibited work both in the UK and internationally over the past three decades. Her work involves embracing processes which give rise to uncertainty, unpredictable encounters, and surprising outcomes. She is concerned with ways of knowing and being working alongside materials whilst uncovering metaphoric associations connected to things in and of themselves.
Visual artist, filmmaker, cameraman, video editor and stills photographer, Adam Sébire lives in the European Arctic (Norway) but works on films from Australia, the Pacific, Greenland and beyond. He focuses on environmental themes through creative, aesthetic approaches in the form of documentary, photography and multi-screen video art. Adam’s photo & video artworks explore global warming and the Anthropocene; his “anthropoScenes” series asks how we might find ways of being & existing in the uncharted territory beyond the Holocene.
Susan Wardell is an anthropologist, writer, artist and poet, based at the University of Otago, in Aotearoa New Zealand. Her research interests cluster around care, affect, embodiment, health and disability, and digital worlds. She is a past winner of the National Flash Fiction Day competition and has placed in numerous micro and poetry awards as well. Earlier this year, she co-curated the Energy in Motion conference as a UNESCO City of Literature partnered event.