Book launch: High Fire Danger by Emma Trenorden

Join Emma Trenorden and special guests to celebrate the release her of her poetry book High Fire Danger.

High Fire Danger is written in response to the Black Summer fires of 2019-2020. Poetry vignettes zoom in and out of varying perspectives, from someone looking back at their home in the rear-view mirror as they leave in a hurry, to satellite images revealing the sweeping scale of the burnt land, to a scorched forest returning to life months later.

Carefully crafted vignettes allow the reader to move beyond the news bites that confront us every day, to a more spacious consideration of the many ways our lives have been impacted by wild weather events like the devastating fires of Black Summer.

‘Trenorden’s voice is vitrified by the emergency, her steady gaze indispensable. Sparse and urgent, moving and attentive, these poems blaze with climate fury and tend the living shoots of survival. Essential reading for our times.’ Jennifer Mills

Finding ways to grieve our losses is part of making sense of the new world we find ourselves in – a world in which wild weather events become more frequent. Through her poems, Emma hopes to contribute to a dialogue that allows for a process of collective grieving, recognising that this grief is necessary fuel for generating hope through action, in these turbulent times.

Emma Trenorden is an Mparntwe-based artist who, alongside her poetry, is an indie-folk singer-songwriter. The release of High Fire Danger coincides with the release of Emma’s debut EP, reWILD. The first single of this track – radical RE – is a song of renewal and regeneration, of reimagination and recalibration, inspired by the words of climate leaders. The single will be available on all listening platforms 18th September and you can pre-save the track here.