Mr. Wendell Berry of Kentucky

Wendell Berry interviewed in Dissent, Spring 2012

Abstract:

Each generational wave of environmental concern seems to lap at Wendell Berry's doorstep. He gave up teaching and writing in New York in the sixties to return to Kentucky, establishing a small farm at Lanes Landing near Port Royal, and dedicating himself to writing about the roots of the life he leads there. Readers have sought his inspiration to overcome the incessant churning of environmental destruction and industrial food production. Berry embodies a certain sort of alternative. When I arrived at Lanes Landing, I knew that many seekers had come before me to put a face to the writing, and to see this life for themselves.

via muse.jhu.edu

Project MUSE reports that this interview with Wendell Berry by Sarah Leonard is published in Dissent. I don't have access to either Dissent or Project MUSE.

Source: Dissent
Volume 59, Number 2, Spring 2012
pp. 42-47 | 10.1353/dss.2012.0049

"Growing Home with Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson"

GROWING HOME host Marla Camp, publisher of Edible Austin moderated an on-stage conversation with Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson when they came to Austin in December of 2011 to lend their support to Edible Austin's annual fundraiser for two central Texas food nonprofits, Urban Roots and Sustainable Food Center. They shared their thoughts and wisdom with a sold out house—a show produced by Edible Austin with support from University of Texas professor Robert Jensen and the Paramount Theatre. The following special episode of Growing Home is an excerpt from that show.

via www.ediblecommunities.com

Interview: Nate Schlueter on Wendell Berry

BB: I’m interviewing you for CatholicVote?  What does this book offer for the American Catholic?

NS: Although Berry comes from the Protestant tradition, his Catholic admirers are struck by the “Catholic imagination” that suffuses his work. Readers will find in his writings an indirect but eloquent defense of many of the principles of Catholic Social Teaching (e.g. the comprehensiveness of the faith, stewardship, subsidiarity, the evils of consumerism, etc.). Our collection includes a number of prominent Catholic contributors, such as Antony Esolen, Anne Husted Burleigh, Patrick Deneen, and William Fahey, who in one way or another bring out these connections. They do so in part by showing how Berry’s fiction offers a concrete embodiment and imaginative elaboration of those principles. The imagination matters greatly for how we live, and art plays an important role in shaping that imagination. Catholics need to take this seriously, not by retreating to crude didactics, but by immersing themselves in great works of literature that inform the moral imagination. Very good artists can imitate evil in art without relying upon sensationalism, but only great artists can imitate goodness without being sentimental. In this respect Berry’s poetry and fiction are singular. They give his readers a taste of goodness that is both wholesome and hard, while providing some inoculation against the false premises of modern culture and liberal utopianism.

via www.catholicvote.org

Blog Watch: "Interview with Mark Shiffman: On Wendell Berry"

Mark Shiffman is a professor of humanities at Villanova.  When we met last summer I asked him about his specialties.  He replied: Plato, Aristotle, then listed other names in ancient philosophy.  Then he added "and of course Wendell Berry!"  Immediately I knew that I had made a friend (as readers of this blog will no doubt know..I am a huge admirer of Berry).  Shiffman has written a wonderful essay on Berry and Aristotle that was featured in Communio, so I thought he would be a guide and and introducer to Berry's work.

via theartofthegoodlife.blogspot.com

Orion hosts Berry, DeChristopher and Blanton on Principled Activism

For a complete recording of the conversation among Wendell Berry, Tim DeChristopher, and Teri Blanton, go HERE.

With much gratitude to Orion Magazine and Orion Grassroots Network.

Wendell Berry interviewed on "Living on Earth: The Costs of Coal"

GELLERMAN: So why did you occupy the office of the Governor of Kentucky?

BERRY: Because the issue is very large and very urgent: that is, the destruction of the coalfields of eastern Kentucky, by surface mining at its most violent, which is to say - mountaintop removal.

GELLERMAN: Well, what did you want the Governor to do about it?

BERRY: You have to understand - our complaint is in the context of a virtual dead-silence for many years on the part of state government. We have done everything we could think of to get a hearing - without any effect whatsoever. So this was simply the next thing if we were going to continue our opposition to those mining practices.

via www.loe.org

An interview: "Sitting In with Wendell Berry to End Mountaintop Removal"

Midway through the historic sit-in, author Jeff Biggers—the grandson of a coal miner and a vocal critic of mountaintop removal—spoke to Wendell Berry about his goals for the sit-in and the importance of civil disobedience.

---

Jeff Biggers: Can you summarize what you’ve been doing here for the last several days?

Wendell Berry: What we’ve done is follow up on a visit we made to the governor’s office last May. On that visit, we talked to the governor and, in effect, it was to no effect. We didn’t cause any thought to happen. It was an unsatisfactory conversation. We didn’t really speak to each other; we didn’t really hear each other. We didn’t talk back and forth on the same question—as you have to do in a real conversation.

via www.yesmagazine.org

Thomas Healy interviews Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry will be in Bloomington, Indiana from November 9 –11 to read from his work and participate in a discussion with work and participate in a discussion with Wes Jackson and Scott Russell Sanders as part of the Patten Lecture series. Details: patten.indiana.edu/ Berry spoke with Healy from his northern Kentucky farm prior to the November elections.

TPH: You're going to be giving the Patten Lecture in Bloomington, IN and I wanted to see if you’d given any thought to what you’d be discussing in that lecture.

WB: To tell you the truth, I haven’t. There are a number of possibilities, I’m not going to write a lecture, I’ve already told them that, and I may be reading a piece of fiction. I just don’t know.

TPH: Given all the problems that are in the world do you still have a grateful heart? Do you still have things that you’re thankful for?

WB: Of course. In spite of all the damage we’ve done to it, it’s still a good world. To live in it as long as I have without being imprisoned or persecuted for my publications is something to be grateful for. I’ve had a good life, and was born to and among people I’ve admired and loved.

via www.counterpunch.org

Also posted in The Bloomington Alternative

Wendell Berry interviewed by Jackson Hole Weekly

And let me tell you, Berry is hard to get a hold of. I called his farm for an interview every day for two weeks without an answer. He has no cell phone, no answering machine, no call-waiting. And certainly, no email. When I finally did get a hold of him, he told me that he doesn’t use anything with a screen. He gave me my first lesson in gardening, which is that one must be free from distraction. The same is true of writing. If one forgets the conveniences of modern life for the sake of the work, suddenly everything doesn’t seem so urgent, even updating Facebook.
“I belong to the slow communication movement,” Berry said.

via www.planetjh.com

"A Visit with Wendell Berry"

Allen Levi, Ben May, and I stood on Wendell Berry’s front porch as nervous as schoolboys. Allen had prayed aloud as we pulled up to the little Kentucky farmhouse that God would keep the visit from descending into some goofy hero worship, and that we’d remember who we are, that somehow our visit would amount to a blessing to the Berrys even as it would be to us. Basically it was, “Dear God, don’t let us be dummies.”

via www.rabbitroom.com