Sophie McKeand – OUTSIDER

on borders and ecosystems

February 17, 2020

Sophie McKeandIn response to a week-long creative residency at the National Trust’s Chirk Castle, Jan/Feb 2020 To ascend the steep, tree-lined, bird-song-filled lane and face Chirk Castle’s imposing portcullis entrance, is to do no less than to hike through centuries of time. Multifaceted layers hang like bright linen sheets in the morning fog of these borderlands, of y ffîn, so that if you slow down for long enough you might feel a slight caress on the cheek, or a brush…

feature field recordings poetry

crøwoman

August 6, 2018

…

Europe feature minimalism nature politics travel

A Slow Life

July 26, 2018

I’m embracing the slow life more these days. It’s a way of existing I’ve felt a great affinity with for some years. When we lived in Mold I was the U.K. project officer for Cittaslow UK for a time (Cittaslow being Italian for Slow Town where the idea originated). Just in our small town we planted community orchards and put on festivals ❤. It’s not a movement that’s taken off so much in the U.K. and I would break my…

feature nature politics travel

Nature & the working classes

July 24, 2018

I’ve never been this far north before and although we’ve come during a particularly charmed summer season, I’m in awe at the beautiful, seemingly delicate plants that grow here. Even in this inhospitable place on the edge of a cliff that is mostly battered by wind and rain or salted sea water, these plants thrive. Tiny birds (twite?) whip across the sky like bonfire ashes and I can’t imagine how such fragile-looking creatures survive these summers, nevermind winters. I’m also…

feature nature travel

Alder Tree Dreaming.

June 28, 2018

Parked next to this beautiful Alder tree on the northwest coast of Scotland for a couple of days I feel her rooting into my consciousness and dreams. I am trying to be more mindful of thoughts when around certain trees: what emotions am I experiencing? What memories are surfacing? What fragments of conversations/films/books/songs/poems are needling at the mind? Dreams have been turbulent but I cannot remember any details – I know this is also something that needs work. I am…

Cymraeg feature nature poetry Wales

Hanes (parts 1 & 2)

June 22, 2018

Today I hiked along the north Wales hills. This photograph (thanks Andy) has made me smile because it reminds me of how far I’ve come. Around 13 years ago the world changed quite dramatically and I felt as if I were going quite mad while at the same time discovering both myself and a deep and profound connection with nature. I had a compulsion to walk these hills as I tried to understand the new ways in which I was…

Cymraeg feature feminism nature travel

Walking it Through

May 6, 2018

All life is art. This is what the flowers show. This is what the trees echo. This is what the land knows. Each day we wake and experience the ways in which every element of the natural world continues to evolve, no two years are the same as individually and collectively they create this world for us to inhabit. Nature teaches us that art is not something we do, it is who we are. I hear the call to travel…

feature nature travel

I eat the spider and swallow citrine

March 2, 2018

Not all forests are friendly, I should note this. On our journey south in early January we stop overnight in a French pine forest and my dreams are difficult: jarring images of a fat bronze spider worry at the edges of sleep, he winds the darkness around me with unclear intentions and so, in this dream after exhausting every avenue, I eat him. I eat the spider. I bite down on his body and swallow him whole. The trees are…