Scrub
Beyond the chain-link fence of my primary school, across the alleyway into town, was a land of fascination. We called it the ‘waste ground’ and I’d wander there looking for…
books
Gardens Speak
The Political Performance of Mourning Gardens Speak is an interactive sound installation based on the oral histories of ten ordinary people who were buried in gardens across Syria during the…
The Look Away
Although I cannot see them, I know they are out there. Hare. Fox. Raven. Each waiting to play their part. – Richard Skelton, The Look Away A…
We Were Strangers
A friend of mine passed away a few months ago and, although we were never especially close, his death affected me deeply. For a time afterwards I found myself impelled,…
The Gathering Cloud / An Ocean of Static
I write from Edinburgh, from a flat enveloped by the haar, a cold fog that comes in off the sea and whites out the world. The fog binds land with…
Rethinking Mythogeography
I first came across Phil Smith in Walking, Writing and Performance, in which he appears as ‘The Crab Man’, an alter ego also credited as one of the contributors to…
Keep the Ink Moving
The art of Maxim Peter Griffin attunes itself to the spirit of a place. Or is it spirits? His work taps the frequencies that thrum, seldom heard, through the worlds…
Ghosts on the Shore
Identities – of people and of places – form slowly over time, through the sedimentary accretion of multiple overlapping layers. Even the oldest or most deeply buried stories never entirely…
The Old Weird Albion
Histories and hauntings of the English South When I think of the South Downs, I see a watercolour of Beachy Head by Eric Ravilious. A chalky white cliff illuminated by…
On Time and Mess
Once we understand excess, then we can get really simple. – Robert Rauschenberg Exploring poetry’s absent indispensable character Because poetry is not a thing that lives, to…
The Second Body
At 6 a.m. on a Thursday morning in November it was completely dark outside, but the butcher’s shop was strip-lit and the raw meat area was full of busy young…