A speculative essay on language in the face of climate catastrophe: how we memorialize what has been lost and what soon will be, pushing public imagination into generative realms.⁠

“I am in need of a word,” writes Lauren Markham in an email to the Bureau of Linguistical Reality, an organization that coins neologisms. She describes her desire to memorialize something that is in the process of being lost—a landscape, a species, birdsong. How do we mourn the abstracted casualties of what’s to come? ⁠

In a dazzling synthesis of reporting, memoir, and essay, Markham reflects on the design and function of memorials, from the traditional to the speculative—the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC, a converted prison in Ljubljana, a “ghost forest” of dead cedar trees in a Manhattan park—in an attempt to reckon with the grief of climate catastrophe. Can memorials look toward the future as they do to the past? How can we create “a psychic space for feeling” while spurring action and agitating for change?⁠

Immemorial is part of the Undelivered Lectures series from Transit Books.⁠

PRAISE FOR IMMEMORIAL

“Urgent, heartfelt, and lyrical reflections...Markham offers an intimate meditation on the climate crisis.”—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

"Markham delivers a probing meditation on grief, memory, and memorialization... Plaintive and powerful, this is hard to forget."—Publishers Weekly

“A linguistic quest, an inquiry into the reparative capacities of human expression...Over the course of Immemorial, Markham’s interpretation of memorial grows more capacious, and less rooted to static and unchanging structures."—Rachel Vorona Cote, The Washington Post

“A vital, moving portrait of how to live in a world we may never get back.”—Vulture

"Immemorial takes a loving last look at the dying world... the text becomes something you want to reach out and touch.”—The Believer

“An elegant meditation on memory and impermanence in an age of climate crisis.”—Foreword Reviews

“Immemorial breaks the traditional essay form and puts it back together again with fragments of art, history, memoir, and reporting, a formal decision that embodies the interconnectedness of the climate crisis.”—Full Stop

“This tiny tome packs a wallop. The author is searching for a word for the feeling of premourning—for the planet, for everything that is disappearing before our eyes.” — Sam Miller, Carmichael’s Bookstore (Louisville, KY)

“Nearly every page in this stunning book has been dog-eared and underlined . . . I am enamored.” — Hannah deBree, Mrs. Dalloway’s Bookstore (Berkeley, CA)

“You could highlight at least one line on every page—Markham is that consistently insightful, intelligent, and thought-provoking.” — Bryan Seitz, Literati Bookstore (Ann Arbor, MI)