The Learned Pig

Art – Thinking – Nature – Writing

Tag: Justin Hopper

  • Chanctonbury Rings

    Chanctonbury Rings

    Chanctonbury Rings is a new spoken word and music project on Ghost Box Records by the poet and writer Justin Hopper and folk musician Sharron Kraus, and featuring Ghost Box’s own Belbury Poly. The album is based on live performances of Hopper’s book The Old Weird Albion (Penned in the Margins, 2017), a poetic and…

  • 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…

  • Phytology

    Phytology

    “And though thou seemst a weedling wild – Wild and neglected like to me – Thou still art dear to nature’s child And I will stoop to notice thee For oft like thee, in wild retreat, Arrayed in humble garb like thee, There’s many a seeming weed proves sweet As sweet as garden flowers can…

  • To Solve Such An Equation

    To Solve Such An Equation

    Seven Counter-clockwise Turns Around Ruin Lust   Have you ever known a place which seemed to have no beginning and no end? Paul Nash, Monster Field     1. The first time I walked to Chanctonbury Ring, it was whole. A proud bristle of beech trees sprouting from an Iron Age fort atop the West…

  • Shorelines Festival 2013

    Shorelines Festival 2013

    The perennial danger of the small town literary festival is that it takes place solely within the confines of a conference centre / tent / town hall or other academic / municipal space. However well-advertised, accessible (geographically, financially) and welcoming, there is always then a potential for division between inside and outside. This becomes pronounced…