Tag: birds
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Epicormic Psychology
The regeneration of Australia’s flora and fauna after fire is swift; or is this just a misconception of a nation’s psyche? The winding trail of sandstone rubble ascends before me through a pocket of dorsal-fin shaped bushland in Lapstone, in Australia’s Blue Mountains. This ecosystem is not granted a name. Even though it…
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Dolly
Everyone on Prospect Walk knew Pat Steggles had a problem with drink; it wasn’t just me. For as long as I’d known her she’d always had a glass in her hand, and I often saw her carrying an empty Martini bottle down Wellington Lane to the off-license for a refill. Nobody could fail to notice…
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Murmuration of Starlings
A huge mass of black sweeps across the sky; surging, swirling and constantly changing form. This is a murmuration of starlings, an extraordinary natural phenomenon seen in the autumn and winter months. Such spectacular sights used to be more common when the birds flocked in greater numbers – in 1799, the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge…
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Finite and Alive
It’s rare for me to write about artists whose work I have never seen face to face. It’s hard to respond through a screen to something created to be viewed up close. But that’s not to say it’s not possible. Besides, however near your nose is to the glass, there is always a distance between…
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Inca Doves
Is it odd to say I thought of you as I pulled a dead dove from the swimming pool? Spine up to God, floating lightly with its bright beak face down. Streams of red outlined the strange sight. I gently scooped him up, ignorant of sex, his eyes closed so gently as if in…
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Walking in the Sky
A small brown kestrel rises over the crest of a hill and pauses, hanging in the wind, scanning the fields below. With a tilt of its wings, it shifts vantage point twice, three times, hangs for a moment, then suddenly slides downwards, a gleam of silver under the high sun. Six foot from the ground,…
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Books of the Month
February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 Like a Tree, Walking Vahni Capildeo Carcanet November 2021 Pothos Rosa Campbell Broken Sleep Books October 2021 Cartographies of the Imagination Kirsty Badenoch, Sayan Skandarajah (editors) September 2021 Epic Camilla Nelson Guillemot Press August 2021 Echtrai Journal B G Nichols / Bran Graeme Nairne (editors) AnMór July 2021 Florilegia…