a tidal log book: salt, moon, sun, wind ≈ I – Kirkcaldy Harbour To think of the journeys that have started and ended here. Safe harbour: a place of refuge or shelter. Arrivals and departures, crossing borders. Time measured in tidal flows. A … Continue reading →
Category: poetry
Cambridge Road Estate Tree Poems
Below are two of the poems I wrote specially for and read on Alison Fure’s Walk with Jane Soundwalk with the Museum of Walking back in September. There is another soundwalk taking place on Saturday 19th October from 10.30am. It is FREE but please book via the Walk with Jane website. See Alison’s blog for … Continue reading Cambridge Road Estate Tree Poems →
Walk with Jane on the Cambridge Estate
Alison Fure is leading a Soundwalk as part of her Walks with Jane project, in conjunction with The Museum of Walking, through the Cambridge Estate in Kingston Upon Thames, this Saturday evening, 7th September, 2019. From the Museum of Walking website event page: This … Continue reading Walk with Jane on the Cambridge Estate →
Sward
Meaning “sod, turf” developed from the notion of the “skin” of the earth (compare Old Norse grassvörðr, Danish grønsvær “greensward”). Walking the central reservation of the A240 Kingston Road, from Tolworth Roundabout to the Royal Borough of Kingston Upon Thames boundary with the Borough of Epsom and Ewell. The project is called ‘Sward’ after reading … Continue reading Sward →
Hogsmill Tiddlers
At the wooden bridge, beside the washing-willow, under frayed dare-devil rope-swing, we small-fry gather; splash-paddle in the sun-filled slipstream, our expectant jam jars perched ready on banks for contents of day-glo nets on bamboo poles, skim-dunked, dipped into laughing sparkle, we seek out elusive piscine lurkers, shoal-darters, minnow-school pretty-carpers, spike-backed silver-bellied sticklebacks, shimmer and shift … Continue reading Hogsmill Tiddlers →
Votes For Women! Annie Kenney and the 26 Armistice Project
Last year I was lucky enough to be part of a wonderful project by 26 and the Imperial War Museum: Armistice 100 Days. This ambitious project involved 100 writers each writing a centena – a specially created form of writing for the project – about someone who was alive during the First World War. Each … Continue reading Votes For Women! Annie Kenney and the 26 Armistice Project →
Dead Trees #1
It is the Urban Tree Festival this weekend – celebrating London’s amazing Urban Forest. While we celebrate our wonderful leafy friends this weekend, I am also commemorating the significant number of trees that are being destroyed at an unprecedented rate at the moment in the Royal Borough of Kingston Upon Thames. This is not something … Continue reading Dead Trees #1 →
The Osmotic Ocean
osmosis: A gradual, often unconscious process of assimilation or absorption; the spontaneous passage or diffusion of water or other solvents through a semipermeable membrane. ≈ The walker on the city street stops to gaze at the ocean. Tracing a … Continue reading →
Well Being and Eco Tourism in Devon
A week long immersive course with international trainer and storyteller Steph Bradley. Dates: Wednesday 31st July – Tuesday 6th August 2019 Venue: Bala Brook Retreat Centre, https://www.balabrook.org.uk , Dartmoor National Park, Devon, UK. Accommodation: A range of single and twin rooms, some en-suite, situated in an idyllic setting of gardens bordering open moorland. Meals: All […]
Back to the Forest of Spectral Trees
they came to stand and listen a hushed communion old gods. new gods. uncanny colours, shapes and forms the strange, disorienting world of the wild wood listening station (listen in) ≈≈≈ Now playing: Harmonia & Eno … Continue reading →
The Moon Over Tolworth
In the mundane modern semi-detached suburbs slippers, gravel, teatime tables GCSE revision the Moon guides me home welcomes me to this season with its golden corona moonflower harvest sky The Moon ~O~ I speed down the A3 toward Tolworth Tower follow the curve of the road there it is again on the right … Continue reading The Moon Over Tolworth →
Ancient Droves and the Tolworth Area Plan
“The poetry of earth is never dead: When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge, about the new-mown mead; That is the Grasshopper’s.” On the Grasshopper and Cricket, John Keats In the midst of the summer heatwave and haze, we … Continue reading Ancient Droves and the Tolworth Area Plan →
Walk the Ancient Droves of Tolworth Court Farm, Sunday 12th August
The latest in our series of Tolworth Treasure and the Hogsmill Hum walks is a walk across Tolworth Court Farm Fields, our local nature reserve. We will meet at the white bridge over the Hogsmill / Bonesgate Stream at 11am and take you on a journey through the ancient fields of Tolworth Court Farm, which … Continue reading Walk the Ancient Droves of Tolworth Court Farm, Sunday 12th August →
Glow / \ Black
W. J. Watson has suggested that this is a Pictish water-word, cognate with OW gloiu ‘liquid’, W gloyw ‘shiny’ (1926, 470), while Jacob King prefers a Celtic root *gleiwo- ‘gleaming, clear’. Place Names of Fife (2006) A Saturday in late April 2018. It feels … Continue reading →
Walking in Richard Jefferies’ Footsteps, Monday May 7th 2018
Outside Richard Jefferies’ House, Ewell Road “Jefferies left school at fifteen and at first continued his habits of solitary wanderings about the local countryside. He dressed carelessly and allowed his hair to grow down to his collar. This, with his “bent form and long, rapid stride made him an object of wonder in the … Continue reading Walking in Richard Jefferies’ Footsteps, Monday May 7th 2018 →
Court Farm Writers
Court Farm Writers is a new writing group, and it starts tomorrow, Wednesday 16th May! Each week, you will be able to try different styles and forms of writing in a relaxed, friendly and supportive workshop. Meeting in the comfortable surroundings of Court Farm Garden Centre Cafe, we will talk about writing and look at … Continue reading Court Farm Writers →
Spaces of Silence
1876 ≈ Out of the silence of centuries, discrete words will, one day, surface for us … Edmond Jabès text without words unheard conversation solitaire (listening to the light) setting sun reflects … Continue reading →
In the footsteps of Richard Jefferies – Part One
Did you know that one of our most cherished and important nature writers lived in Tolworth? Richard Jefferies (1848-1887) was born in Coate in Wiltshire, but moved to live in Tolworth, at 296 Ewell Road, from 1877 – 1882. During this time he wrote what is acknowledged to be his finest writing, some of which … Continue reading In the footsteps of Richard Jefferies – Part One →
Through the White World
Island of residual ≈ It was only for a few days. The immediate sensory world became a continuum of white and grey. A familiar world made strange. Almost all colour, leached from the field of vision and imagination. White Grey … Continue reading →
Lost Coordinates II
Lost coordinates: Where untold stories bleed into images beyond words Where unheard sounds of the spectral field become entangled ≈≈≈ Now playing: Jim O’Rourke – Disengage ...