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Reflections on a year of Landscapism
And so my first 12 months of blogging on the landscape - of landscapism - reaches an end; a repository of thoughts given their head.My aim has been to provide a forum to bring together, promote and...
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Navigating to a 'high forcing chamber of history'
The Chartist Cave:Image from www.blaenau-gwent.gov.uk "The union met in secret on the dark side of the hill, by the light of a thousand candles" Ironmasters, The Men They Couldn't HangParticipation in...
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Off the map familiar
Source: landofmapsHow the world would look if the land masses and oceans were invertedHere are some strikingly idiosyncratic and tangential cartographical images (see more at Maps you never knew you...
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Conflicting narratives of a landscape past and present
Below are two images that appear to be starkly different; one in a bucolic setting, the other concrete and urban. They are in fact the same location: Stapleton Bridge at the bottom of Bell Hill,...
View ArticleDerek Jarman - A Journey to Avebury
A Journey to Avebury - an early Derek Jarman Super 8 film from 1971 (via You Tube). Another addition to the hippy-pagan-folk landscape aesthetic of the time, complementing the contemporary The Children...
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A last blast of winter: 'Come see the north wind's masonry'
Seen from afar, the ridge of the Black Mountains was a bright white saddle-back; we expected snow, but not the 'merciless whiteness' we encountered as we parked short of the car park, our way cut off...
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The landscape that Thatcherism created
"Where there is harmony, may we bring discord. Where there is truth, may we bring error. Where there is faith, may we bring doubt. And where there is hope, may we bring dispair."
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Landscape in particular 6: Harberton, Devon and Tierra del Fuego
Several years ago my partner Lisa and I spent a month criss-crossing the towering wonder of the Andes of Chile and Argentina; a Patagonian odyssey of the sublime and the superlative. In the midst of...
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The beautiful game lives on in Ultima Thule
I'm very much an ex football fan, jaded and disillusioned by the ridiculous grandiloquence of the professional game.However, in remotest Ultima Thule, it seems there is a true venue for the beautiful...
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'Yon pure waters, from their aery heights'
Mountain pool, Offa's Dyke footpath, Hatterrall ridge - Black Mountains"When hope presented some far-distant good,That seemed from heaven descending, like the floodOf yon pure waters, from their aery...
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A Field in England: All hail the New Psychedelic Puritans
Following on from Kill List and Sightseers, I'm looking forward to Ben Wheatley's forthcoming film A Field in England; tapping into Witchfinder Generaland Winstanley territory: all hail the New...
View Article'I see a new earth': Herzog v Machen
Opening scene of Heart of Glass; directed by Werner Herzog, soundtrack by Popol Vuh, 1976'After years of labour, after years of toiling and groping in the dark, after days and nights of disappointment...
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Reliquiae Volume One
Reliquiæ is an annual journal of poetry, short fiction, non-fiction, translations and visual art, edited by Autumn Richardson & Richard Skelton. Each issue collects together both old and new work...
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Unbounded freedom ruled the wandering scene
"I thought of walks in the English countryside, where people start shouting at you as soon as you stray from the footpath". A statement by George Monbiot from his thought-provoking new work Feral...
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Relief from the Heat of Noon
The summer rolls on remorselessly, harsh heat overcoming wasted shade; at such times reading becomes a relief from the unwavering sun, especially lines that reflect the season: midsummer leaching from...
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Voices from the well
The Church of Merthyr Issui at Patricio (now Partrishow) inhabits its location high up on the western slope of the Grwyne Fawr valley in the Black Mountains as only an ancient country church can do;...
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Saltmarsh, Ile de Noirmoutier
A circling plain, bleached flat in wide-screen by sun and overcoming sky;lonely home to hunting heron, bird-call and clearing thoughts.Hum of wind-washed grasses, bent in rhythm, amplifying the calm.An...
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Landscape and poetry: 'an anthology open in the sun'
I seem to be increasingly immersing myself in sounds and words that my younger, more culturally timid self, would have eschewed. It strikes me that getting older allows you to choose, perhaps...
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Pastoral punk: Tracing the melancholic margins of the landscape
Music and landscape have always had a kinetic relationship, as essayed in my post Songs like the grass are evergreen. Perhaps this is a constant well-spring, but there seems to currently be a strong...
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