WayWORD 2022

I really enjoyed being a small part of WayWORD 2022 this last week: a cross-arts literary festival hosted by the WORD Centre for Creative Writing at the University of Aberdeen. I ran a workshop on writing Landscape and Place which was attended by a lovely group of folk who shared some wonderful writing coming out of the exercises we did. For me, it was a really special opportunity to share my passion and spend time talking about the relationship between landscape and memory, place and story, and to see the different ways in which others tapped into the landscape as a ready resource for their imaginations. I hope to run the workshop again in the future. Thanks go to Helen Lynch and her amazing team, and to the attendees who braved the wet weather to come along.

New Essay on The Clearing

‘I can hear the distant sound of the ocean, smell the ozone in the air and feel the fine mist of salt-spray against my skin.’

A new short essay on The Clearing: A Journal of Nature, Landscape and Place published by Little Toller Books. The essay takes the reader to Luskentyre in southwest Harris in the Outer Hebrides, exploring its origins and the forces still at play there, set against the ever burgeoning problems of climate change. I visited Luskentyre during my winter residency with Island Darkroom back in February. The essay is a much abridged extract from a chapter in my longer work-in-progress that forms part of my PhD. Thanks go to Jon Woolcott for his expert editorial input, and to Little Toller for hosting such a great online journal. I hope you enjoy the essay’s evocation of Luskentyre’s sense of place and time, which you can read here.