Kathryn’s Tann’s Seaglass is a collection of nonfiction essays focused on the experience of nature, the environment and the more than human, including social commentary and anecdotes about family life. The metaphor of sea glass is apt and beautiful because it alludes to finding debris from the sea, especially glass, which has been honed by the environment into beautiful and pleasing shapes. The glass also invokes the idea of moments being captured and cherished, as the first section describes the act of collecting and appreciating things washed up on the beach. At one point, Tann explains that she began writing nonfiction to ‘transport me to the places back home, in Wales’. Wales is very important in this book.
The collection deals with ecological thought about pollution, the impact of human behaviours on the environment, as well as the possibilities it offers us when we pay attention to it. The places described are often Wales-based; the beaches and walks of Pembrokeshire National Park feature, though the essays range around the UK, and Tann mentions experiences in Canada, where she has family links as her grandmother once lived there.
The collection draws on scientific methodologies as it includes many “records” – close, careful observations of nature – in the tradition of the natural sciences. There are also diary entries focused on specific places, in the tradition of writers from Darwin to Dorothy Wordsworth. Some essays use geographical markers so you could almost take the walk and follow in the steps of the writer. These interesting formal decisions invite us to carefully observe the natural world and become immersed in it.
Among the essays within the book, Tann ranges around tending to focus on beautiful, wild spaces and their impact on us as human beings, as well as the act of sharing experiences of nature with friends and family. ‘To Make the Perfect Gravy’ describes shared family experiences of cooking and growing food, while ‘New Year’s Day’ recounts a particular walk on the coast when the speaker is literally thrown off her feet by the wind. Tann’s walk happens alongside her dad, so it also a moving account of a shared experience – how they witness this together.
Tann considers the impact of pollution on wild spaces and the integration of nature and the manmade. In ‘Collecting Seaglass’, Tann is disappointed to find plastic on the beach, and she ponders her partner’s comment: “That plastic probably makes a really good nest”. Though I worry about ecological models that expect nature to adapt to mitigate ecological crisis, Tann’s explorations do tend to be honest and realistic about the difficulties we face. For example, ‘The Nature of Change (Fire)’ questions how well the natural world can adapt or what counts as part of nature or not. Reflecting growing instances of wildfires around the world, Tann focuses on how the environment is forced to regenerate in their wake. Using geographical markers for location, the essay maps a walk on Marsden Moors with lovingly recorded detail. It discusses the moorland fires and describes the changes in the landscape, including regeneration. There is a note of unease however as a guide explains that
The more fires we have, the more this grass takes over. And then we’re more likely to have another fire … It’s a vicious cycle.
Tann is not overly optimistic then, but aware of the seriousness of ecological crisis.
One of my favourite essays by Tann is the frank and vulnerable ‘Return to Water’, where Tann reveals that her love of swimming and water was interrupted as a teenager when she ‘inherited the family tendency for acne’. The essay that follows is important and taboo-breaking, as the writer outlines feelings of shame as well as physical and emotional pain around experiencing acne and difficulty in finding medical help to relieve it. It is a moving account of having “problem skin”, as Tann explains how she managed the emotional difficulty by living “in complete denial of the thing that, secretly, ruled my life”. Tann argues that though make-up is sometimes seen as a trivial thing, not worth writing about, it can be essential for some people, and often the people most obsessed with wearing make-up inwardly suffer low self-esteem. In this account, medical professionals who do not take the problem seriously, at least initially. Finally though, Tann describes becoming reconciled to the body and being set free to enjoy the pleasure of swimming without fear.
Ultimately, Seaglass is a beautifully written account of a life spent devoted to recording wonder experienced in the natural world. The book achieves what it sets out to do – to wander the beach and appreciate what is found there. The essays are indeed like pieces of sea glass, capturing memories of places and times which are already passing, and there is a poignancy to that too. Rooted in remembrances of family and friends, Seaglass encourages us to find adventures in the nature around us and to share those with the people we love.
Zoë Brigley is a founding editor of MODRON. zoebrigley.com
Modron Magazine 