Four children alone in the Amazon Rain forest

Ruth Hartley Storytelling, Children's Stories, Climate change, Dust and Rain, Journey, Zambia3 Comments

There was good news. Four children had survived a plane crash and 40 days wandering in the Amazon jungle.They were children who had knowledge and experience of nature but they were weak and hungry when they were found. This is a profound lesson for all humans. We are human animals. We are part of nature and our survival depends on […]

Poetry and people and the place of women

Ruth Hartley Storytelling, Books by Ruth Hartley, Creative Writing, Creativity, Feminism, Imagination, Poetry, Songs, The Spiral-Bound Notebooks, Writing Process2 Comments

Poets are an elite species Where did the idea come that poets are a separate kind of human that is more aesthetically refined, sensitive, better educated and therefore part of an elite? Where did the idea come from that we can’t sing unless taught how to do it? Is this why some of us avoid trying to write poetry and […]

Egypt’s COP27 and Zambia’s Kariba Dam

Ruth Hartley Storytelling, Apartheid, Books by Ruth Hartley, Colonialism, Creativity, Displacement, Freedom Fighters, Identity, Politics, Power, Southern Africa, The Shaping of WaterLeave a Comment

Disembarking at Cairo, we were confronted with an enormous billboard welcoming delegates to the COP27 climate conference. 40 000 delegates were meeting to discuss, among other things, the painful question of financial responsibility for fixing the climate crisis caused largely by the activities of developed countries. Visiting Egypt was a long-held dream. It was wonderful for many reasons, not least […]

Fly with me

Ruth Hartley Storytelling, Art by Ruth Hartley, Books by Ruth Hartley, Displacement, Installations, Migration, Refugee, When We Were Wicked2 Comments

We have a wonderful red Chinese kite that we bought in Shanghai in 2007. It’s a giant squid that flies with beautiful ease, but needs both space and wind. Here in our village we have space, but not much wind. That’s changing with the climate. The wind we get now is gusty, dusty and inconstant. In Zambia I would see […]

Reviews, more writing and the next books

Ruth Hartley Storytelling, Dust and RainLeave a Comment

Writing a series: What happens after Chipo and Chibwe save their green valley? I started writing a story about the importance of trees for my grandson, Stephen Kupakwesu, in 1993 and that book evolved into Dust and Rain, but it hasn’t ended there. I planned a series of children’s books and experimented with various formats from one huge book to […]