The Learned Pig

Art – Thinking – Nature – Writing

Tag: sea

  • Macroalgae Matters

    Macroalgae Matters

    Seaweed in a time of climate crisis: an encounter with a rotten seashore funk prompts writer Andrew Furman to discover more about sargassum.

  • Toast to the Spring / waveformed

    Toast to the Spring / waveformed

      Toast to the Spring   Black fangs to the east, badlands to the west, the world beyond — glaciers, jungles, dunes and meadows — and home, the garden and the spinney. Lemon seed, a splash of you. A toast. A thousand years in limestone prison. A minute in the sunshine, drowned in the ocean….

  • Stories from The Whale Road

    Stories from The Whale Road

    A journey from Iceland across to the Faroe Islands and finally to Sweden, by illustrator, artist and author Helen Cann.

  • Spoiled Waters Spilled

    Spoiled Waters Spilled

    Previewing an exhibition exploring rivers, contamination and cross-border circulation. Part of Manifesta 13 Les Parallèles du Sud.

  • Undertow

    Undertow

    Walking the Edge A trusted mentor once told me, having read my work, “You often write about the meeting places of land and water.” She was right, though I’d never thought about the habit before; my tendency to do so was neither intentional nor premeditated. “There are few things more ancient than humans walking to…

  • Mapping Edge

    Mapping Edge

      Mapping Edge   Finger touched mapped faded edge, unending ink black shaped lines, tracing hillsides I walked as a child. Black tufted strokes, old rough pastures, where curlews once rose away from me, ungrazed now, fallen into rush thistled bog. . The parish track, a dry stone wall field margin, a ridgeway in words,…

  • Art in a deteriorating world

    Art in a deteriorating world

    An epistolary exploration of art’s moral responsibilities   “In the era of not yet, barely daring to guess of how soon,” wrote Welsh-British writer Horatio Clare about the melting sea ice, the planet’s air conditioner, in his book Icebreaker, published less then two years ago. Now the scientists dare to guess, and red lights on…

  • The Gathering Cloud / An Ocean of Static

    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 sea and sky. It feels like an apt place and time from which to respond, briefly, to two recent books by JR Carpenter – The…

  • The Old Weird Albion

    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 a lighthouse with an ominous raincloud hovering above it. I remember climbing to the top of the Devil’s Dyke to look at the pastoral Constable…

  • The Future is the Past: Harwich, Essex

    The Future is the Past: Harwich, Essex

    Harwich has a split personality. At the northeasternmost point of Essex, the old town is still laid out as the medieval port it once was, but it’s separated from the cranes at Harwich International Port situated a mile up the Stour river. For centuries it was a key access point to Europe: a “gateway”, when…

  • Kaiku

    Kaiku

    Kaiku peeked through the kitchen window. The scene was empty – the Shaman was out. Kaiku went to the kitchen cupboard. Behind the pots and pans her fingers found a key. With great care she opened the door. The action made her shiver with excitement. The heavy door opened slowly. The room bathed in sunlight….