Smoking hot bodies

Composting and the animal afterlife

Featured in

  • Published 20231107
  • ISBN: 978-1-922212-89-4
  • Extent: 207pp
  • Paperback, ePub, PDF, Kindle compatible

IF, IN AN attempt to break Marvel’s grip on the superhero genre, you were to reboot the early ’90s children’s animated series Captain Planet and the Planeteers, you needn’t change much. Our hero could keep his aquamarine mullet, which would now be ironic. His cast of Planeteers – Kwame from Africa, Gi from Asia, Ma-Ti from South America, Wheeler from the US and Linka from the USSR – satisfy contemporary standards of workplace diversity (although Linka would need a new passport). Bad guys would still be looting and polluting, but more likely in the form of pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere rather than CFCs. And as well as encouraging viewers at home to reduce, reuse and recycle, Captain Planet, I am sure, would now hold a compost fork.

Is it possible that we are beginning to appreciate death? I don’t mean mortality, which Western culture continues to sweep under the existential carpet, but the physical act of decay. Breaking down is on the up: composting is cool. Most community gardens now offer composting lessons, schools make their own piles from playground food scraps, and the range of compost bins at my local Bunnings takes up an entire aisle. At the end of 2022, the American celebrity chef Alison Roman recommended The Rot, an email newsletter I subscribe to that is dedicated to ‘all things compost’.

Already a subscriber? Sign in here

If you are an educator or student wishing to access content for study purposes please contact us at griffithreview@griffith.edu.au

Share article

More from author

Peasant dreaming

MemoirI’m currently doing a course on holistic farming near the southern New South Wales town of Braidwood. I had expected it to be full of ruddy-cheeked cattlemen in their forties and fifties; instead it is mostly people like me, tertiary-educated thirtysomethings who want to grow their own food to nourish their vocations. We are writers, a ceramicist and a filmmaker; a market gardener with a background in conservation; the manager of a local farmers’ market and her partner, who feeds his chooks on maggots from roadkill kangaroos.

More from this edition

A new animal

Poetry My son has made friends with the daddy-long-legs under the kitchen bench. Each morning  I am freshly summoned to ‘um ook at em.’  Come look at him. The body: a dot  of...

When the birds scream

Non-fictionI read books in which girls like me made friends with cockatoos and galahs, and my mum told me stories about my pop in Queensland who could teach any bird to speak and to whistle his favourite country songs. My favourite story was the one about the bird who used to sit on his shoulder while he drove trucks for work. I wanted a bird that would sit on my shoulder, and I thought that because I had a pop who talked to birds, I could too. ut back then I didn’t realise the difference between teaching birds to speak with human voices and having birds speak to you with their own voices. It was a lesson I didn’t learn until Pop sent me Normie. 

Anemone

Poetry Lady, in this heavy light  you show tender: waving your insides  outside, buffeted by the sea’s  old heave ho. Nobody calls out medusa – but there’s a distinct...

Stay up to date with the latest, news, articles and special offers from Griffith Review.