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Next month sees the launch of Shorelines, a collaborative project, focussed on the dividing line between land and water, hosted on our sister site Walk Listen Create. We invite new writing to be submitted, and in turn, for these works to be read aloud and recorded. This is our tentative first step towards encouraging writing and […]
Really excited to share that Groundworks has published an interview with me about …
Back in January I was honoured to be invited by Poets for the Planet to run two workshops at their launch event at the Society Of Authors in London. “Poets for the Planet is a community of kindred poets, performers, artists and creative activists raising their voices to engage with climate and ecological emergency through … Continue reading Verse Aid : Poems for the Earth →
Open letter from the Indigenous Collective of scholars and authors( A group brought …
In recent weeks, I have become increasingly obsessed about how I am managing …
It has been just over a year since our family said goodbye to …
My new chapbook, Sward {skin of the earth}, published by Sampson Low Ltd, is available for purchase here Sward + post and packing UK £3.50 GBP EU £4.50 GBP Rest of the world £5.00 GBP Sward represents my walks up and down the central reservation of the A240, Kingston Road, from the Tolworth Roundabout to … Continue reading Sward {skin of the earth} →
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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
Borderlands: Disruptions between remote map-making and local readings of place Dr Tracey Benson, …
John Payne in W.G Sebald’s Footsteps…. There is no doubt in my mind that Austerlitz Station in Paris is the key to this rather enigmatic novel which draws a personal and emotional and rather misleading map of Europe, said John, misleading in that the novel appears to be meandering nowhere and the story and […]
‘A map can tell me how to find a place I have not seen, but have often imagined. When I get there, following the map faithfully, the place is not the place of my imagination. Maps, growing ever more real, are much less true.’ Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry A map constitutes relationships and connections, […]
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 →
“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 →
Dr Tracey M Benson, April 2018 *Edited from article commissioned by Institute of Art and Ideas (www.iai.tv) You are at the Eiffel Tower and want to get that perfect picture, a selfie with the tower in the background, just like the ones you see in the travel guides. But there is a problem. You find it […]
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 →
Yesterday started with a silent walking workshop with Ienke Kastelein. Although the workshop started at 8am it was already very hot. Our small group ventured up the hill in silence, meeting under the shade of a tree so Ienke could guide us to the next part of the workshop. We were asked to see want […]
