Author: isgfreelance

Cover Reveal!

/ isgfreelance / Leave a comment

Coming September 2022 from UWA Publishing: a creative and critical engagement with place that crosses hemispheres and challenges typical perceptions of two often overlooked regions. 

It’s been a long time in the making, a journey that began back in the summer of 2019. We all know what happened shortly afterwards but really happy to see the project come to fruition: a collaboration between writers, poets, artists and academic researchers to create a deep map of four rivers: the Derbari Yerrigan (Swan) and Dyarlgarro Beeliar (Canning) rivers in southwest Australia, and the Don and Dee rivers in northeast Scotland, weaving narratives of place across seemingly disparate regions of the world into a thoughtful, provoking and surprising engagement with landscape. 

My own contribution charts the river Don through time, revealing how its once sacred associations during the Neolithic, Pictish and early medieval periods still shape the region today. 

Looking forward to its release this September. 

Edited by Dr. Jo Jones with Neil Curtis. 

Follow @uwapublishing for details of this and their other titles.

Island Darkroom Exhibition

/ isgfreelance / Leave a comment

From July 22nd 2022, there will be an exhibition of work created by the Winter Artists in Residence hosted by Island Darkroom over early 2022.

Photographs taken during my research time on the island as part of my own residency will feature in the exhibition along with my thoughts and reflections following my stay. The research was for my PhD and the book that will hopefully come out of it, charting a journey back through the places that have featured in my life to better understand how the landscape can shape a sense of who we are. I was honoured that Island Darkroom drew on some of my writing for the title of the exhibition, and the work featured as a whole seems to chime with this theme. 

If you’re in the Western Isles over the weekend of 22nd – 24th July, be sure to call in and check it out, with four international artists sharing exhibition space besides my own contribution.

You can find out more about the exhibition and the other events taking place at Island Darkroom by visiting their website and signing up to their newsletter, here.

Scotland Outdoors

/ isgfreelance / 2 Comments

Back in March 2022 I was invited to talk with Helen Needham of BBC Radio Scotland about place, about time, and my approach to the landscape. We took a walk up an often over-looked hill in Aberdeenshire that has been the focus and the start-point of my writing about landscape and how it shapes us. In this episode you can join us as we explore the hill and its histories, and listen to the conversation that resulted.

Download the podcast here.

Or you can listen to it on BBC Radio Sounds.

New Work in Southlight Magazine

/ isgfreelance / Leave a comment

Happy to have work back in Southlight magazine having contributed to two previous issues. There will be a live reading event at The Yellow Door Gallery in Dumfries on June 11th at 6.00pm with actual people! Sadly I won’t be able to make it, but I hope anyone in the Dumfries area will call in and listen to the work of the other contributors present; and please do pick up a copy, either on the day or through Southlight’s own website. The issue is full of great writing by some well-known Scottish writers including the prolific Margaret Elphinstone and writer and poet Hugh McMillan along with many others, not to mention a forward by editor Vivien Jones. My own contribution is an essay with accompanying images which continues an exploration of Lewis stemming from my residency with Island Darkroom in February and first appeared in abridged form in Elsewhere: A Journal of Place.