Advanced Research Centre

The Mushroom at the End of the World: Book Group

ARC Public; ARCSPRING
Date: Tuesday 04 April 2023
Time: 1800 - 1930
Venue: Advanced Research Centre (The ARC)
Category: Social events
Speaker: Dr Maria Sledmere
Website: http://bit.ly/3FLWjZt

Free but ticketed via mushroom-at-end-of-world.eventbrite.co.uk

Matsutake is the most valuable mushroom in the world—and a weed that grows in human-disturbed forests across the northern hemisphere. Through its ability to nurture trees, matsutake helps forests to grow in daunting places. It is also an edible delicacy in Japan, where it sometimes commands astronomical prices. In all its contradictions, matsutake offers insights into areas far beyond just mushrooms and addresses a crucial question: what manages to live in the ruins we have made?

Join Dr Maria Sledmere for the first of our Spring Fling! book groups to discuss this tale of diversity within our damaged landscapes, and to explore through one of the strangest commodity chains of our times the unexpected corners of capitalism. No advanced reading required – copies of relevant passages will be provided. Dr Maria Sledmere is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Strathclyde and Tutor in English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow. She has authored over twenty books of poetry, including Cocoa and Nothing with Colin Herd (SPAM Press), Visions & Feed (HVTN Press) and The Luna Erratum (Dostoyevsky Wannabe), which was shortlisted for the Saltire Society's Scottish Poetry Book of the Year 2022. She also co-edited The Last Song: Words for Frightened Rabbit (Broken Sleep Books) with Aaron Kent and the weird folds: everyday poems from the anthropocene (Dostoyevsky Wannabe) with Rhian Williams. Maria is editor-in-chief of SPAM Press and a member of A+E Collective. Find her at mariasledmere.com

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