Jay Armstrong conceived Elementum in Cornwall, on England's far western coast, where the sound of the Atlantic is never quite out of earshot. What she wanted was a journal that brought together the scientist's findings and the artist's response, the ecologist's observation and the writer's reflection — a publication that asked questions as much as it answered them, retaining a sense of wonder at the unseen and unknowable. The first issue, themed around the call of the ocean, rolled off the presses and immediately felt different from the nature-writing magazines already crowding the shelves.
Now published biannually from Sherborne in Dorset, where Armstrong has also opened the Elementum Gallery, the journal commissions established and emerging writers alongside illustrators of remarkable calibre — Neil Gower, who designs Bill Bryson's covers, and Jackie Morris, co-creator of The Lost Words, among them. Each issue is printed in the UK on high-quality uncoated paper with no advertising, designed to give the reader space to absorb ideas without hurry. The writing is long, ruminative, often poetic; the subjects range from Zennor's mermaids to Yosemite's black bears, from Aboriginal songlines to the pilgrimage routes of Santiago de Compostela.
Elementum is environmental without being political, spiritual without being religious. Armstrong describes it as genre-fluid — a crucible where academics, folklorists, and artists bring their own responses to landscape and deep time. The result is a journal you return to for weeks, not one you finish in an hour, and it has quickly become a collector's item among readers who want their nature writing to be as beautiful on the page as the world it describes.
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