ABOUT US

“Until the lion has its praise singer, the tale of the hunt will only be told by the hunter”
Maasai Proverb

Welcome to ZOOMORPHIC – dedicated to writing that deepens our connection with wildlife and the more-than-human world.

In the past half-century one in two of the earth’s wild creatures has been lost due to habitat erasure, global warming, poaching and farming practices. As a result we are increasingly losing our connection with beings we have shared the planet with for the whole of our species history, creatures that have not only provided us with food and materials, but inspired our cultures with stories, metaphors, images and mythologies, deepening all human experience.

We are now at a juncture where continuing decline would lead to future generations no longer sharing the earth with polar bears or gorillas. They will not see the flight of lapwings or witness the migrations of wild salmon.

We believe that to defend non-human species we must reconnect our imaginations to them. We aim to curate this space from that core principle.

Zoomorphic online issues contain short and in-depth prose pieces and a selection of poetry and artwork. It is a project managed and contributed to on a voluntary basis.

If you would like to contact us about Zoomorphic please email: [email protected]

ABOUT THE EDITORS:

James Roberts – Founder, Art Director and Editor

jamesbioJames has been face-to-face with Mountain Gorillas in the Congo, Elephants in Kenya, Timber Wolves in Canada as well as the many smaller and less celebrated creatures in his home area, the Brecon Beacons National Park. He publishes essays and poetry, and is also an artist and designer.


Susan Richardson – Poetry Editor

SusanRichardsonSusan is a Wales-based poet, performer and educator, whose third collection, skindancing, themed around human-animal metamorphosis and both our intimacy with, and alienation from, the wild and our animal selves, was published by Cinnamon Press in 2015. Her previous two collections, Creatures of the Intertidal Zone and Where the Air is Rarefied, focus on her own, and other human and non-human animals’, journeys through the increasingly fragile Arctic environment.

Susan is currently poet-in-residence with both the Marine Conservation Society, writing poems and running workshops in response to their Thirty Threatened Species project, and the global animal welfare initiative, World Animal Day. Susan has performed at literary, environmental and science festivals throughout the UK, for organisations such as WWF, Friends of the Earth and the Centre for Human Animal Studies, on BBC 2, Radio 4 and at Universities both nationally and internationally. Her fourth collection of poetry, themed around endangered marine species, will be published in 2018.

For further information, please visit her website.

Stephen Rutt – Prose Editor

Stephen is a writer, photographer and naturalist with a particular obsession for winged-things.
He has been tick-bitten in a Hungarian marsh, floated in a boat in the mid-Atlantic and spent six months on a remote Orcadian isle in search of increasingly obscure birds. He holds an MA in Wild Writing: Literature and the Environment from the University of Essex.

His prose has been published in Driftfish, EarthLines, The Harrier and the East Anglian Daily Times. He tweets @steverutt and blogs at stephenrutt.blogspot.com.