Poetry and fiction in and about cities is nothing new. But around the world cities are becoming more numerous and rapidly evolving—growing larger and faster than ever before, each at once remaining unique and revealing similarities, all both a challenge and a promise to the future of our societies and environment. In these dualities we seek a nature of cities and communities that are resilient, livable, sustainable, and just.
Poets and fiction writers are striving to reveal the invisible infrastructure of their communities, generating new works out of their activism and everyday practice. They are reaching out to practitioners in other disciplines, from architecture to ecology, to expand vocabularies and explore new directions. The Nature of Cities is welcoming writers in an intentionally broad conversation about cities, asking them to illuminate the city they are in. It is a chance for all of us to remember and imagine our city.
The Nature of Cities is curating a series of poems and fiction from around the world on themes of cities: communities, infrastructure, open space, and nature. It is a series about the cities of our dreams: resilient, sustainable, livable, and just. One example of this approach can be seen in Stories of the Nature of Cities, our short fiction contest series. Stories from that project, plus other fiction, poetry, and imaginative essays will appear here.
The Wild Edges of Our Garden
Kirby Manià, Vancouver
One morning before school, my father hurriedly interrupted my sister and me at the breakfast table, with a look of mischief in his eye, and an instruction to follow him, quickly and quietly, into the garden.1 It was a relatively chilly morning, at least by the standards of generally sunny...
0 Comment(s)Join our Conversation
GENESIS 2.0
Joseph Rabie, Montreuil
In the end, Humankind reverse-engineered the heavens and the world. And while there had been some semblance of order before, Humankind turned it all inside out, night became muddled with day, and day with night. Humankind took the carbon lodged in the darkness of the earth and expelled it into...
1 Comment(s)Join our Conversation
Neither Above Nor Below
Claire Stanford, Los Angeles
Jakarta Is Sinking So Fast, It Could End Up Underwater —New York Times headline, 12/21/17 A flash of silver-green in the water. That is all Hasan sees, but it is enough. He runs after, alongside, his small legs propelling him across the planks and platforms that crisscross the city. The...
1 Comment(s)Join our Conversation
Teleportation and the Reinvention of the World’s Cities: A 20-year Retrospective
Rob McDonald, Basel
It began, like electricity before it, as a new technology for the rich in lower Manhattan to play with. A daring startup, Helios Travel, began offering teleportation from Greenwich (Connecticut) to Wall Street for the princely sum of $10,000 a pop. Many potential customers couldn’t handle the idea of all...
0 Comment(s)Join our Conversation
The Singing Air
Andreas Weber, Berlin
“…as if refusing to be caught / In any singular vision of my eye / Or in the nets and cages of my thought, / They tower up, shatter, and madden space / With their divergences, are each alone / Swallowed from sight.”— Richard Wilbur, An Event (excerpt) In the last...
1 Comment(s)Join our Conversation
Imagining Future Cities in an Age of Ecological Change
Ursula Heise, Los Angeles
The guidelines of the prompt were very simple. Stories had to be set in a city in the distant future (i.e. in or near the year 2099), be 1,000 words or less, and have as significant plot points both nature and people. With this framework The Nature of Cities launched...
2 Comment(s)Join our Conversation
2046, year of our lady The Fog
Claudia Luna Fuentes, Saltillo
This is part of the TNOC poetry and fiction series “The City We’re In”. Lea el poema en español, su idioma original. Lisez le poème en français. 2046, year of our lady The Fog Poems by Claudia Luna Fuentes Translation from Spanish by Gerardo Mendoza Garza _____________________________________________ 2046, año de...
0 Comment(s)Join our Conversation
World Enough: Tales from the Bottom of the Garden
Katrine Claassens, Montreal
If you took the city of Tokyo and turned it upside down and shook it you would be amazed at the animals that fall out: badgers, wolves, boa constrictors, crocodiles, ostriches, baboons, capybaras, wild boars, leopards, manatees, ruminants, in untold numbers. There is no doubt in my mind that that...
8 Comment(s)Join our Conversation
Time of the Poppies
Andreas Weber, Berlin
“Do you seek the highest, the greatest? The plant can teach you to do so. What it is without will of its own, that you should be with intent – that’s the point!” —Friedrich Schiller Some days ago, after giving a lecture in a west German city, I arrived back...
4 Comment(s)Join our Conversation