The Learned Pig

Art – Thinking – Nature – Writing

Category: Writing

  • almost like almost

    almost like almost

      almost like almost . . . . . . . he said in land there is a line around a wolf within is other and awe social grace packed who wills foul and unrest . . . . . . . when the chaste self ills the line extends skin to no where inside…

  • She-Wolf, Kauttua 1963

    She-Wolf, Kauttua 1963

    For three nights the she-wolf skirted the village. Must be desperate, to leave the forest, her cubs must be starving. The men oiled their guns, waxed their skis, took their time, an easy target this one, no hurry. When she howled, her ahh oww, oww, owwww sliced through the still air, sliced right through the…

  • Who’ll Guard the Horse?

    Who’ll Guard the Horse?

      for Tim Cope, and his horseback journey from Mongolia to Hungary.     Sheered pig fat for the dog, and in his eating, a spirit passing continental drift toward another day revolving. The dog that is protection, the dog that is the anti-crisis. The dog descendent from what is firecracking in temporary fear from…

  • To howl

    To howl

        Inspired by and sourced from ‘Ash’ by Autumn Richardson and Richard Skelton, in Relics (Broughton Mills: Corbel Stone Press, 2013). Image credit: John Morgan, Ruins of Drosgol Farmstead, at the foot of Pumlumon (Plynlimon) on the banks of Nant-y-moch Reservoir, near Aberystwyth Part of The Learned Pig’s Wolf Crossing editorial season, spring/summer 2017….

  • Big Bad Wolf

    Big Bad Wolf

      I’m in love with a big bad wolf. It’s causing a bit of a fuss, but when I saw him on Tinder I knew he was the one; there was nothing left to discuss. My brothers told me to dump him, or they’d jump him. Send him back up North. They would get me…

  • Interview with a Wolf

    Interview with a Wolf

    Once upon a time, there was a magical fairy-tale world where marvellous and unbelievable events occurred and, as a general rule, everyone lived happily ever after, unless of course, you’re a wolf. In which case, these marvellous and unbelievable events were only marvellous in the sense of something to be wondered at, and unbelievable in…

  • Tame

    Tame

      the skin peels off my face ……………..Cheap tears of bone organs collapsing, unlace then stitch ligaments. moving spinal columns ……………..I watch my body remove my inner symptoms then cover up pushing against stretched leather ……………..Cut me up for fun in amongst the forest heather displace the poison red staining pale white ……………..Teeth elongating reaching…

  • The Light Comes in the Name of the Voice

    The Light Comes in the Name of the Voice

      “The light comes in the name of the voice.” – Jeanne d’Arc, as quoted by Anne Carson in Variations on the Right to Remain Silent   And in the end, only this moment. First the ash-pile, white, fine wood-ash, grimy ice, a grey noon. The pigs. Frost lacing the leaves. The girl with itchy…

  • Popular Astronomy

    Popular Astronomy

      Agnes Mary Clerke (1842-1907) was not a practical astronomer, but wrote a number of important books and articles that explained existing astronomical research to the general public.   Winter, the ghosts of fuchsias sigh; in the frost, the fox chews mouse-tails. I step in each of my father’s foot-prints as we carry the telescope…

  • The Way of Florida

    The Way of Florida

    Russell Persson’s The Way of Florida is a compact, driving, rhythmical work – a novel, but quite unlike most. The book revisits the ill-fated Narváez expedition of the sixteenth century, which saw a group of some 600 Spanish, Greek, and Portuguese explorers arrive on the coast of Florida intent on establishing preliminary colonial settlements and…

  • Mhadaidh, Maddy, Mad

    Mhadaidh, Maddy, Mad

      Corrie nam Fiadh, Deer Corrie the gentleness ………of browsing deer Allt a’ Mhadaidh, Wolf Burn will never ………dissolve the wolf   Some place-names refer to one-off events, like pegs stuck in the ground of memory. Others reckon the catastrophe of species loss over centuries. In his pioneering study of the influence humans have on…