David Oates

In both poetry and prose I am continuing to explore questions of resistance to entrenched political power. . . But also, how much deeper our lives are than politics. (A paradox, since politics is inescapable in a social species!)

My current writing project is The Mountains of Paris: How Awe and Wonder Saved My Life. It’s about those fleeting moments of transcendence that contain so much joy, so strangely mixed with sorrow and sometimes even terror. We know this feeling from mountain peaks and the starry universe overhead (what used to be called “the sublime”) but also from music and art. And also in moments of human connection. What does it mean? Can’t quite be captured in words. This book is an inquiry in the form of spiritual autobiography, a mix of confession, travelogue, and coming-out story. It’s “making the rounds” just now, looking for its publisher.

My other ongoing writing projects are moving deeper into the urban/natural borderlands. I’m writing about art and urbanism, music and politics and, of course, how all this fits into the wild world in which nature always gets the last word.