After a couple of days in Manchester I’m now leaving Andy and the hounds in north Wales and jumping on the train to South Wales for an event in Swansea tomorrow. I wanted to take time for some forest bathing in the woods we used to walk every day with our dogs before leaving. The Japanese call forest bathing shinrin-yoku. Shinrin means “forest,” and yoku means “bath.” Ah! This makes my heart sing. I’ve shared so many poems, laughs and…
Today is day100 of #dailyconnectionwithnature so I had to feature the van. I can’t even begin to explain how switching to a nomadic lifestyle has changed us. When last in India I wrote a poem on an overnight train, and called it Dharma. It includes the lines: live as closely to nature as possible / create / love / everything else is superfluous / everything else is part of the lie that keeps you / enslaved like a battery…
This time of year the Rowan berries are exploding everywhere across sightlines. These were one of the first trees I fully connected with – their insistence that I hear them was inescapable. Later I discovered that Rowan is the tree for my birth date in the ogham tree calendar. One of the things I’ve come to realise is that the trees don’t necessarily have information to share, so to approach them expecting great revelations every time is to leave…
It’s a wet day out. The rain bounces off our solar panels in waves of sound that thrum into a series of rooftop crescendos. I’ve got wool socks on for the first time in months and the leaves are turning to mustard yellow or rust on the trees. On days like this the van becomes our little haven where we hide out and listen to podcasts or BBC Radio 4 Extra; rehearse poems or catch up with other work.…
We get asked about our family and how we cope with missing them on the road. Since moving into the van we’ve felt a significant shift in our connection with family because the van makes us aware of what is important, and also allows us to follow that, so when we’re in Wales we create a lot of quality family time. We’re not the grandparents who live two doors down and babysit every Friday night, but then our daughter…
All of my tattoos hold symbolic meaning. The older tattoo on this arm was inked in about 2010/11. It’s a quote from PB Shelley: poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. The cherry blossom is symbolic of the beauty and transience of life. It was the first tattoo on my arms and I waited so long (I was 35ish), because this was my symbol of freedom. I’d been freelancing for a few years and had got to the…