Blurb: Icarus wants to rewrite his story. Yet the chance of finding a happy ending appear slim when he accidentally smuggles carbon dioxide into the atmosphere during yet another fall to earth, metamorphoses back to life as a woman and is informed by a nearby talking bicycle that they’ve been sent across Europe in search of a solution to climate change. Through the Weather Glass tells a fantastic version of the true story of the author’s struggles to understand environmental change through the persona of Icarus and her bicycle as they embark on a genre-twisting and gender-bending road  trip to an Ancient Greek climate conference in Athens hosted by Zeus.

Available to purchase from Knives Forks and Spoons Press here or directly from the author (email lucyburnett75@gmail.com).

Reviews & quotes

Sam Smith in The Journal, May 2015

‘Literary works with this strong a narrative, and I don’t use the term literary lightly, are rare beasts.’

Adeline Johns-Putra, Chair of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment:

‘Burnett eschews the usual apocalyptic and dystopian scenarios to produce a narrative whose complexity does justice to the complexity of climate change. It manages soaring moments of poetry, laugh-out-loud, down-to-earth comedy, and much in between.’

Scott Thurston, poet and organiser of The Other Room experimental poetry series:

‘Burnett’s new book, like the weather glass, becomes a vessel for the sensitive registering of pressure in the cultural atmosphere. By turns it rests placidly, contained in its own form, then bubbles up unpredictably, threatening to overflow its bounds. This rhythm of attention – to changes in the climate, on the road and in the self – conveys the manifold pleasures of this unique and visionary work that overturns the cliches of climate change literature and sends them spinning like a bicycle wheel crossing the Alps.’