Landscape Amnesia
As the last horse trailer passes you by on the potholed road you take an exit. Across a green pasture you park the car. You stretch your legs. Gravel grinds…
writing
Editorial: Fields
In May 1982, American artist Agnes Denes began to transform a two acre empty plot at the foot of the World Trade Center into her work Wheatfield – A Confrontation,…
Earth Turned Honey
Moksha The desert has no memory. Sun beats on its chest, collarbone glistens: I wait for rain, an angry sea filling the sky to break, blow, burn, make a…
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…
Untranslatable
Chamomile Freak-show Poisonous in the wild, or so I was told, overtaking the verges on the main road, probably nothing after oversized daisies perhaps, a gem or relaxation abates….
Hommes sous Hommes, II
In 2005, I went to Palestine for three weeks with my parents, my wife and our daughter, aged two. We were invited to carry out workshops with young artists and…
Dicksonia Antarctica
The Tree Fern I once had a Tree Fern (Dicksonia Antarctica) For many, many years my First view each morning From our upstairs window. Beautiful, sweeping fronds So elegant…
A Weekend on Mars
This Moment In Time Just when the crescent moon appeared. When the ailanthus shivered. When a heron shook its feathery crown and the little wheel turned inside the…
A Foraged Map
Spread over my kitchen table, emptied from the various cloth bags and tubs, were the wild plants that I’d gathered that day. As I viewed them from above, deliberating as…
Mapping the In-Betweens
By the time I was seven I had moved house four times in three countries on two continents. A few years later, I found myself dropped into another new place:…
Entrained Rhythms
I: Aretha I’ve just moved to Uppsala, Sweden, where at first I knew no-one, apart from my old friend Kalle, who with characteristic kindness invited me to go see Amazing…