Author and Narrative Non-Fiction Tutor, Peter Forbes

Peter Forbes has been teaching City St Georges’ Narrative Non-Fiction short course for almost a decade and in that time has shepherded countless students towards publication. This year sees the publication of his new book, Thinking Small and Large: How Microbes Made and Can Save our World. Ahead of its launch, we caught up with Peter to find out more about the book, his teaching and the mighty power of microbes.

1. What first sparked your interest in microbes?

I spent the first half of my life not at all interested in microbes, so I was very typical of the readers I’m trying to reach. I read chemistry at university and what interested me most even then was geochemistry and the origin of life. Very little was known about the origin then and my life went in a different direction – I was editor of the Poetry Society’s magazine Poetry Review for sixteen years. But I had also, when I worked as a natural history desk editor in the pre-Poetry Review phase, become deeply interested in biology. I learnt that the amazing abilities of some animals and plants lay in the nanoworld inside their cells – the protein nanomachines. After Poetry Review, I started to write on biological topics and my first two books were about creatures like the gecko with their incredible adhesion, the lotus plant with its water-repelling properties, spider silk with its incredible strength, and the remarkable range of mimicry in nature. These led inexorably to the microbes in which the protein nanomachines that lie behind all life’s amazing properties first developed.

2. Could you share a surprising discovery about microbes that changed your own perspective during your research?

There were many but the big discovery was that the early microbes were able to create biomass through the hydrogenation of carbon dioxide without the now universal process of photosynthesis. And today, in our efforts to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, technologists are using some of those ancient bacteria to make ethanol and hence jet fuels, chemicals, materials and even food from carbon dioxide – the very substance that is causing global heating. The uncanny convergence of this four-billion-year full circle in the life of the planet is the single most astonishing discovery I made.

3. What were the biggest challenges in translating complex scientific concepts about microbes into accessible narratives for general readers?

The book is called Thinking Small and Large because I believe that the scale at which life operates is very hard for people to grasp. We have evolved to deal with the world we can see but life’s processes operate on a scale of around a million times smaller than anything we can see and in the environment on a vast scale through processes that are just as invisible as the workings of the inside of the cell – the global transfer of gases between living things, the air, the waters, the rocks and the soil.

I want readers to be able to grasp that the world inside the cell – itself so small to our normal perception – is actual enormous. Inside every living cell is a gigantic, elaborated world like a 3D nano-Venice with teeming chemical routes worming their way through the cell in all directions, with nano analogues of settlements, stores, factories, highways, power stations, subway lines, cars – giants of the infinitesimal, as my late colleague, the sculptor Tom Grimsey called them.

4. What’s one misconception about microbes you hope your book helps to correct?

The biggest and most damaging misconception is that microbes primarily exist to prey on us. We are very much latecomers in life on earth; microbes (bacteria and other single-celled creature), had the world to themselves for over 3 billion years. Homo sapiens has been around as a species for 300,000 years and as a major ecological disrupter for no more than about 10,000 of them. Microbes are incredibly chemically versatile and opportunistic, with a dazzling ability to evolve new biological machinery and so, yes, some eventually evolved to be parasitic on human beings as well as fulfilling other functions in the biosphere.

5. You balance roles as both an author and educator of narrative non-fiction. How does your teaching influence your writing process, and vice versa?

The best way to learn anything is to try to teach it. Teaching writing helped me to find a rationale for what makes writing effective and appealing to read: the compositional techniques that anyone can employ once they know what they are. Teaching writing also teaches you to practice what you preach. And on the course I experience a wonderful range of styles and subject matter.

6. How has your background as a poetry editor influenced your non-fiction writing and teaching?

I always tell the students that poetry is the non-fiction writer’s friend. Poetry is obviously an art in which every word counts – whatever else it is it cannot be just workaday, just about fit for purpose language. And good non-fiction should be just as well composed. I urge them to read their drafts aloud and to take note of the rhythm. “Sound as the echo to the sense” is a very good motto. And apposite poetry quotation is one way to inject another dimension into the subject (with the caveat that if the poetry, however short, is in copyright permission to reproduce is mandatory and expensive).

7. What advice would you give to aspiring UK non-fiction writers trying to make specialised topics engaging for mainstream audiences?

I believe you need to research your subject from as many different viewpoints as possible. I always say that when you compare your book text to the sample chapter and synopsis you wrote at the start you should find that most of it emerged from research after the book was contracted: the best material and stories were unknown to you when you wrote the proposal. That means following every angle that the research brings up: travel to the key places if you can; talk to as many people as possible; bring your lifetime’s reading to bear on your subject.

8. What are you working on now?

Writing a book is a long and exhausting process. Your subject doesn’t stop developing when the book text is complete and it’s good to follow up with some articles. It is a great time in science. It’s easy to lose sight of this in the current global turmoil. Like poetry, science is a great source of hope and inspiration to me.

Thanks so much, Peter! For anyone interested in the book, you can pre-order HERE.

And for anyone wanting to take Peter’s course, see HERE for more information or HERE for our full range of writing short courses.