ATLAS of the Poetic Continent – Pathways to Ecological Citizenship
Lemniscate in Cosmos. Cover, book design, texts and internal images are copyright Shelley Sacks
ABOUT THE BOOK
The ATLAS is a philosophical work-book with images & pages for reader’s use.
PUBLICATION DETAILS
Primary Author: Shelley Sacks, with Wolfgang Zumdick, and many other voices. Temple Lodge Press, 2013. 132 pages.
EXTRACT
“The places of the poetic continent are not physical places. They map the internal regions and contours of the inner human being that lives in a cosmos of other beings and life forms. They constellate the places of the soul.” Shelley Sacks
PUBLISHER’S TEXT
This collection of poetic, philosophical and literary texts and full-colour images offers an ATLAS of the Poetic Continent - a treasure to study, contemplate and inspire action in the world. [From publisher’s note]
OVERVIEW
This ATLAS grew out of a social sculpture process in a city that invited its citizens - individually and collectively - to enter into a process of active reflection on the question 'what am I doing in the world?' This project confirmed that the connection between inner and outer work, and the inner workspace, is central to all transformative social sculpture processes. The maps for this poetic continent open up pathways that enable us to 'come to our senses'. Discovered only in our engagement with the world, and inspired by the constellations of the soul, they offer distilled understandings on the path to a new society: a viable future of free, humane and ecological citizens.”
REVIEWS
Isis Brook
Environmental philosopher, author, gardener,
“A truly beautiful book: Atlas of the Poetic Continent is a beautiful and subtly powerful book. Within its covers Shelley Sacks and Wolgang Zumdick have crafted their own writing and brought this together with well-chosen quotations from others of wisdom. This forms an extended mediation on the human encounter with the world. Or perhaps it would be better to say the human/world experience.
The subtitle: pathways to ecological citizenship, sums up the huge potential of this small text. What it succeeds in doing is taking the reader straight to the core of questions about the human/world relationship. It does this by recognising that questions – true questions that resonate in the human heart – are as palpable as the forests, oceans, communities that generate us and our concerns. Attention to interiority as an expression of compassion for the world, for the cosmos, is a core theme that also resonates in the subtle illustrations, which themselves warrant contemplation.
This book is an extraordinary achievement. It rewards careful and repeated reading but also manages to feed the soul on a swift random dip into its pages. Alighting anywhere in the text seems to return the individual, at some level, to the importance of keeping alive the question, ‘what am I doing in the world’.”
Angus Jenkinson
Professor of Integrated Marketing and Consultant
”An artistic testamentary beacon to social ecology: Short but rich. Consists of a pensées, drawings, human and philosophical insights, quotations, poetic utterances, aperçus, wisdom verses, testaments, thought challenges, thinking instruments (Sacks' expression for verbalised ideas that change consciousness and behaviour), new angles, connections: plays with your mind and ecological heart.
Shelley Sacks is a social artist in the tradition of Joseph Beuys and Rudolf Steiner. They create a form of art that consists of 'texts', where a text might be a line of bark shavings as much as a poster, a blackboard of impromptu drawings illustrating a talk or a composed poem. Think about suffragettes chaining themselves to rails, Femen baring their breasts, or Peter Tatchell arresting Mugabe. All of these were texts. This volume however is cerebral, subtle and feeling, not aggressive like these examples, but it is equally concerned with social issues. For Sacks, ecology is a primary concern, with ecology in its smaller sense also a metaphor for a larger ecology, in which humans find their living relationship with each other and the cosmos, at all levels of detail.”
NOTE This book is currently out of print. It is a philosophical work book that needs also to be held in your hand. It is therefore unlikely to offered in digital format. There are plans to reprint in 2025.
SUPPORT to REPRINT If you’re a lover of the ATLAS ‘workbook’ and can contribute to the 3rd reprinting on good paper and with good binding, please contact me.