At walk · listen · create, we intend to strengthen the support that we provide to walkers-who-write and writers-who-walk.

This past summer (northern hemisphere), on the run-up to Sound Walk September, we ran a writing competition in which we invited participants to contribute poems, or short stories, of fewer than 250 words on the theme of “walking and listening”, with our intention of creating an illustrated anthology chapbook from a selection of these.

With the help of volunteer judges, Geert Vermeire and Kerri Andrews for poetry and NG Bristow and Nick Hallissey for prose, editorial from Rebekah Lattin-Rawstrone and artwork and publishing layout from Alban Low, we published Walking.

Winners in each of the poetry and prose categories were invited to become our writer-in-residence, here at walk · listen · create

We are delighted to announce our writers-in-residence are Lydia Kennaway, for poetry, and Claudia Zeiske for prose. Together we will be shaping their residency programme for the coming months.

We invited them to tell us a little about themselves and their aspirations for their residency.

Lydia Kennaway

(United Kingdom) 

Lydia Kennaway is our poet-in-residence. Lydia will be using her residency to explore the theme of ‘Lost and Found’ in her poetry. She’ll be applying the vocabulary of mapping systems and geolocation to her work, as well as ‘plotting’ poems with Oulipo techniques, and tools such as what3words and Sauntering verse, developed by our own Babak Fakhamzadeh. She’ll also be reading and discussing poems from her pamphlet, A History of Walking.

Lydia earned an MA in Writing Poetry from Newcastle University in 2019, and A History of Walking was published by HappenStance Press the same year. Her work has appeared in 11 anthologies and in magazines such as The Rialto, Raceme and Strix. Lydia won the Flambard Poetry Prize in 2017, and was commended in the 2020/21 Magma Competition. She has given readings at the Ilkley Literature Festival, Leeds Lit Fest, Poetry in Aldeburgh and the Newcastle Poetry Festival.

A New Yorker living in Yorkshire, Lydia is a former music publisher. She enjoys walking or playing the cello when she’s not writing.

You can read her winning entry here

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Claudia Zeiske

(United Kingdom) 

Claudia Zeiske is our writer-in-residence. Claudia intends to develop her ‘Thinking aloud’ form of writing while walking. Those will be produced in regular monthly texts over the 12 month period.

She will also explore the possibility to have monthly in-tandem walks with people from very different places across the world. How to record and document them will be part of this process.

Claudia just loves walking. Walking and the outdoors have given her life-long physical- as well as mental health through ever renewed inspiration and friendships. Claudia lives in Huntly, Scotland.

You can read her winning entry here

More opportunities for writers

Lydia and Claudia have chosen “Walking Home” as the theme for our next writing competition that launches in early December, for which Lydia will be one of the poetry judges.  

This autumn we are running monthly Walking Writers Salons, to which we invite a published author, editor or journalist to share their experiences and writing practice. Martyn Howe, author of Tales from the Big Trails, joined us in October, Alex Roddie author of many hillwalking guides and editor of Sidetracked magazine, was our guest in November, and novelist Geoff Nicolson, who has written two novels and two non-fiction books on walking, joins us as a guest in December.