Profile: Wendell Berry

Sun, 11 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Wendell Berry (1934-2026) was an American novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist and farmer whose agrarian philosophy of “the care of the earth” placed sustained attention to land, place and local community at the centre of ethical life. Over nearly seventy years and more than 50 books, he became one of the central voices of American land ethics, bridging agrarian practice, literature and environmental thought.

Born in Henry County, Kentucky, into a family that had farmed there for five generations, Berry earned his B.A. (1956) and M.A. (1957) in English at the University of Kentucky, taught at Stanford, NYU and the University of Kentucky, then in 1965 returned with his wife Tanya to Lane’s Landing Farm on the Kentucky River at Port Royal - the place that grounded the rest of his life and work. He farmed there, by horse-drawn plough rather than tractor, for over sixty years.

There are, it seems, two muses: the Muse of Inspiration...and the Muse of Realization, who returns again and again to say, 'It is yet more difficult than you thought.'

Sun, 11 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

There are, it seems, two muses: the Muse of Inspiration, who gives us inarticulate visions and desires, and the Muse of Realization, who returns again and again to say, “It is yet more difficult than you thought.”

Writing on deep ecology

Profile: Wendell Berry

There are, it seems, two muses: the Muse of Inspiration...and the Muse of Realization, who returns again and again to say, 'It is yet more difficult than you thought.'