After a torrential rainstorm recently, I find this tiny birds’ nest on the ground under a pine tree. It is so perfectly formed & fragile I have to scoop it up. When I do, I’m enamoured with its delicate weavings – such artistry! Moss & grasses have been purposefully threaded to form the base structure. But mostly I’m surprised by the sturdy composition – a miscellany of hair: dog, horse, human, are tightly woven & layered so that the inner…
I love this visual tree poem Andy created a few years ago. I’m posting it here in yellow & white because it reminds me of the solstice, of the bright summer sun we are enfolded in just now in France & the long shimmering van days spent lazing & loafing by lakes or rivers – I think Walt Whitman would be proud. As the vanlife months roll on I’m still trying to figure out the best way to connect with…
Working on writing another poem in the ‘connecting with trees’ series has me thinking of this poem written over a year ago. Increasingly I feel I have nothing to teach, increasingly I believe I cannot show anybody how to do anything – it’s one of the reasons I’ve quit workshopping. How can I stand in front of a group and teach them how to write anything if all I can really do is to say?: You are beautiful & individual…
We’ve been stationary in the south of France for over a week and it’s finally given me the space to finish the new poetry pamphlet, The Slow-Time Traveller. I’m returning to a hand-stitched pamphlet for this in the way that Hanes, Prophecy, and DRKMTR were all made. Having a limited run and taking the time to make each piece feels fitting. There’s something connecting & grounding about this way of Slow Publishing. I wrote a poem for connecting with autumn/winter…
Excerpt from The Slow-Time Traveller. Part of the new chapter just published on OUTSIDER this morning. Password for all content is over on Patreon. Any time you sign up you get access to the whole back catalogue. Thank you to everyone who’s shown support for this new book format, allowing me the space to experiment with publishing forms.…
Fat French apricots at the farmers market in Mirepoix this week – a table of tumbling sunsets, tasting as sweet as they look. New recipe lands tomorrow along with some thoughts on the slow food ethos that inspires these latest ideas. There’s a poetic piece on slow travel as well as a poem written to sum up my feelings on Brexit. After that I feel I cannot engage with the whole mess any longer. Along with all of this, an…
I am learning to listen to my body. It is a dialogue that should have begun years ago. It is a way of communicating I should have been shown from birth. But women are not taught these things by our patriarchal medical system. My body has been conversing with me all this time & I have ignored her, or I didn’t know how to listen, didn’t understand her language. In the past, I drowned her voice out with alcohol &…
I wrote yesterday of Coflyfr, that it was created by weaving the words of writers throughout time. I’ve been thinking of that piece because I now realise OUTSIDER is a return to this way of working, only instead of immersing in the words of writers, I’ve been taking every new inspiration from the land. Each new day I wake, look what is around me, & create, drinking deep from the river of time that spins us around in pools &…
Iris finds me again. Hidden away at the edge of a riverbank. I almost miss this only Iris in the near vicinity (& realise only after hiking the hounds around all weekend). She has me thinking again on the nature of time – that all time exists as one; that time & space are the same dimension. I first wrote about this in a piece called Coflyfr: experimentations with time (link here). I’d read Jay Griffiths’ Pip Pip: a sideways…