“We will take the story back with us and spread it like butter on the toast of our item-rich society” – says Robyn Hitchcock, of Iceberg TV, in his dispatch for the Cape Farewell expeditions to the ‘frontlines of climate change’, out-takes from which form our central feature, this issue. A richly allusive and ambivalent remark: what is the place of story, of fiction even, in debates about climate? Can we afford the luxury of butter or is it in fact an essential? Read on.

Apart from Cape Farewell and its raft of artistes, the issue contains a strong showing of unorthodox forms, everything on the spectrum from poetry to prose, taking in prose poems, flash fiction and unclassed literature in the middle. On the shorter side, we bring you a lyrical double-bill from Tania Hershman; David Hermann goes back to the dictionary; Inua Ellams celebrates pandemonium; Frank Burton skims stones; John Turner revisits the Flood and Nora Nadjarian is optimistic. And at somewhat greater length, but not much (this is Litro), Lawrence John laments the rise of an unexpected rural literary community, Niall Boyce knocks Avatar into a cocked hat and (with Litro Classics) we take a snapshot of waterless living, mid-ocean, from that other, famous, raft, the Kon-Tiki.

This is Litro as barometer of mid-range atmospherics.

Sophie Lewis