"Lockdown Vocabulary" on the Orion blog

What do swans, songbirds, and a culinary herb have to do with the coronavirus in the UK? My short essay, Lockdown Vocabulary, calls attention to the re-use of nature terms for not-so-natural phenomena and reflects on our (dis)connection to wildlife during the Covid-19 pandemic.

"Lockdown Vocabulary" is my first contribution to the Orion Magazine blog, but it's my second contribution to Orion. The summer 2020 issue includes my feature essay "Of Birds and Barley", an essay adaptation of my MSc thesis on the biopolitics and aesthetics of whooper swans in Iceland. I'm very pleased to have been taken under Orion's wing and look forward to more publications with the magazine.