Welcome to Emergence Magazine's podcast.

I'm Emanuel Von Lee, executive editor of Emergence Magazine.

Our podcast features in-depth interviews, narrated essays, and stories,

exploring the threads, connecting ecology, culture, and spirituality.

Paul Kingsnorth is a writer living in rural Ireland. His first novel, The Wake, was long listed for the Man Booker Prize and won the Gordon Burn Prize and the bookseller of the year award.

Paul's second novel, Beast, was shortlisted for the Encore Award for the best second novel.

In 2017, he published his first collection of essays, Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist.

In this episode, Paul narrates his essay, A Storm Blown from Paradise, beginning with W.B. Yeats' iconic poem, The Second Coming.

This essay is an inquiry into linear and cyclical time and the sweeping momentum of progress.

Not far from where I live in the west of Ireland is the former home of the country's greatest modern poet William Butler Yates.

Thuabali Lee, an old Norman tower attached to a low, thatched cottage, is set in a quiet river valley, which seems to have remained curiously untouched, even as the development

boom of the Celtic tiger years has changed Ireland almost beyond recognition. Time has toyed with

this column of stone. Built in the 15th century by an Anglo-Norman family, the Berks, as a grand

military and social symbol, it later fell into disuse,

at one stage being rented for five pounds by a farmer to house his cattle.

The poet bought it as a ruin a century ago and spent several years restoring it with a local

architect. When he was finished, he composed a poem, which can still be read today,

carved in weather-worn slate on the outside of the tower wall. I, the poet William Yates, with old millboards and

sea-green slates, and smithy work from the Gort Forge, restored this tower for my wife, George.

And may these characters remain when all is ruin once again.

It didn't take long for the tower to become ruin once again.

Yates moved out in 1929 a decade before his death, and Thur Bally Lee was abandoned.

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