Author James Rebanks: ‘There is something to be said for knowing you lived in accord with your values and beliefs'

Irish Times

a day ago

Tell us about your latest book,
The Place of Tides
, and how it came about
My work took me to Norway, briefly, some years ago, and I was so astonished by an old woman I met who lived and worked far out from the coast, in a vast wild seascape, that I couldn't stop thinking about her. Years later I wrote and asked if she might let me visit her, and she signed me up to spend the whole spring with her, learning to make nests from seaweed, protecting the wild birds that came to her and sharing what become her last season as a duck woman.
You're a sheep farmer in England's Lake District, where your family has lived for more than 600 years. How has that influenced your outlook?
I feel a very powerful sense of rootedness and home, and the people I met in Norway were from a sister culture with shared roots in Viking times.
'What began as a journey of escape becomes an extraordinary lesson in self-knowledge and forgiveness.' How so? You were burned out?
Yes. I was totally burnt out.
Farming is often gendered. How was it for you helping women build small duck houses and wash feathers?
I'm not sure that is true. My great-grandmother, grandmother, mother and daughter have all worked as shepherds. Some of the greatest shepherds are women, and no one in that world finds that a problem or newsworthy.
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But the island in Norway was very much a female space, and yes, it did me a lot of good to be in such a place and to be quiet there, suspending and silencing, as best I could, my manly projections, to learn about Anna's world, her work and her perspective on the world. I began to see that a lot of what we call being a man is about striving, achieving status and projecting importance and dominance, and I'm not sure that serves us well.
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James Rebanks on paying the price for the hidden costs of cheap food
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Your work conveys the importance and solace of being in tune with the natural world. Is there also a spiritual dimension too, a desire to connect to something?
Yes. We live for a few short decades if we are lucky on this miraculous planet. It's remarkable, and we ought to pay attention to its everyday glories. We are nature, you and me; it isn't something abstract.
You write a lot about environmental degradation, rubbish washed up on this pristine landscape. Yet you lived with so little there and were happy
The women there were gathering up plastic rubbish, some of which had English brand names on it. Our rubbish washes to the sea and travels up that coast on the Gulf Stream. It is shameful.
There was no electricity and phones didn't work well there, so I had to slow down and adjust to how life must have been before we became manic. It isn't an original observation, but consuming endless stuff on a screen isn't a good recipe for happiness or good health.
It's strange how we can't live without stimuli. Could you have stayed there?
Yes. If I didn't have a family and farm to go home to.
What did you bring home? What did you do differently?
I brought home my mojo, because it returned when I was with those amazing women. I also brought home the simplest of lessons: that we must all go to work to care for the places we live, not give up, practically mending the world around us.
Was it mostly a journey of self-discovery? What did you discover?
That I am just a man, and I will get old, and I will fail at a heap of things, and perhaps succeed at some others, but all that will pass. And win, lose or draw, I will grow old and die, but there is something to be said for leaving the stage gracefully and knowing you lived in accord with your values and beliefs, and that you did your best for those who love you.
Your debut, The Shepherd's Life, was a No 1 bestseller and was shortlisted for the Wainwright and Ondaatje prizes. Tell us about it
It is a book about growing up and working out who you are. It still has insane numbers of readers, and it changed my life.
Your second nature memoir, English Pastoral, won the Wainwright Prize, was shortlisted for the Ondaatje prize and longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize and the Orwell Prize for Political Writing. What was its inspiration?
It was inspired by my dad's commentary over the years before he died about how things on the land had sadly gotten worse, not better.
Which projects are you working on?
I am trying to breed great cattle and sheep and write another book.
Séamus Heaney in 2008. Photograph: Leonardo Cendamo/Getty
Have you made a literary pilgrimage?
Yes. I was in Ireland last week at the Borris Festival, and was able to praise one of my writing heroes, Seamus Heaney, on a stage, and afterwards meet his daughter in the pub. I reckon this counts!
What is the best writing advice you have heard?
Stephen King wrote a great book about writing. I found that helpful.
Who do you admire the most?
People that get shit done, modestly. I hate influencer/celebrity culture.
You are supreme ruler for a day. Which law do you pass or abolish?
I don't want to rule anyone, thanks.
Which current book, film and podcast would you recommend?
My Friends, a novel by Hisham Matar.
The most remarkable place you have visited?
The Vega Archipelago. I wrote my book because I was in awe of it.
Your most treasured possession?
Probably my Belted Galloway cows and calves. I'm a farmer, after all.
What is the most beautiful book that you own?
The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono, with the woodcut illustrations.
Which writers, living or dead, would you invite to your dream dinner party?
We writers are often introverts and the last people anyone should have at dinner parties. We'd all pretend we were having fun and then go home exhausted. I don't really go to dinner parties. Do you?
The best and worst things about where you live?
It is a long way from London. Small communities can, on bad days, be a bit mean.
Who is your favourite fictional character?
Jim in the novel Empire of the Sun by JG Ballard.
A book to make me laugh?
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I didn't expect to laugh out load, but I did over and over again.
A book that might move me to tears?
The Last Witnesses by Svetlana Alexievich.
The Place of Tides is out now in Penguin paperback