literature

Four Rivers, Deep Maps UK Launch

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After being published through UWAP in September 2022 and launched initially in Perth, WA, Four Rivers, Deep Maps comes to the UK with a launch event at the University of Aberdeen on Thursday 15th June in the Sir Duncan Rice Library. Click on the image above for details.

The cities – Perth, Australia, and Aberdeen, Scotland – have received relatively little attention as specific geographical–cultural locales. Often perceived as industrial, isolated and lacking romantic association, they nevertheless have rich historical, narrative and creative traditions that characterise interactions between humans and place, particularly along the length of the four rivers.

My own contribution charts the River Don from source to sea, uncovering its ancient sacred associations and exploring how they have shaped the geography and identity of the region through time.

All the contributions of this book are woven together through strands of deep mapping and ideas of place, history and inhabitation. Countercultures seem to return to specific place knowledge that predates industrialisation, whether in the traditional shapes of the Nyoongar knowledge of the Derbarl Yarrigan (Swan River) and Beeliar (Canning River) or the traditions and ancient patterns of Aberdeenshire: we come back to these profound knowledge systems that, in fact, never went away.

Copies of Four Rivers, Deep Maps are in stock at Blackwells and will be available to purchase on the night.

Fields of Meaning

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The latest podcast from the postgraduate community at Aberdeen University’s School of Language, Literature, Music and Visual Culture where I interview author Eden Unger Bowditch with fellow creative writer Jane Hughes.

Eden talks about her novel in progress Two-Hundred-and-Fifty Years at Home and her thesis Fields of Meaning which examines the role of ambiguity in the literary text. You can listen to it through clicking on the image above or find it on your preferred podcast platform.

An Open Book

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Really excited to be setting up a new Open Book writing group in Aberdeenshire in the coming weeks.

Open Book are a fantastic organisation, set up in 2013 to help build communities through shared reading. Their groups now encompass creative writing and have been set up across Scotland. They are expanding their current provision with a Growth Pilot of 5 further groups in areas not currently served and which I’m very happy to be a part of.

Details will follow!

What I’m Reading

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I’m a day late for International Women’s Day, but this collection of great books by wonderful women authors all offer thoughtful and enlightening perspectives on landscapes, belonging, and the nature of home and homelands. I was lucky enough to hear Chitra Ramaswamy, Kerri Andrews and Amanda Thomson read and discuss their work at Pitlochry Theatre’s Winter Words Festival last month, and I’ve been following the trajectory of Pamela Petro’s The Long Field since being published, with a new paperback edition just out.

Kerri’s entertaining, funny and at times, moving book, re-writes the canon on mountain literature, and the place of women writers within it, while Pamela Petro’s Long Field is a deep exploration of longing, language and identity. Amanda Thomson’s book weaves personal narratives of place and self through the forests of Abernethy, and Chitra Ramaswamy’s book is an exploration of borders and identities through a poignant and very moving account of her long standing friendship with two Holocaust survivors.

Each of these books explore place and identity in different ways, and speak to us at a time when both of these things are at the fore in the national and global narratives that are reshaping our world.

Great books by great women writers.

2022 Round Up

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Looking back over a busy year that started on the Isle of Lewis. My trip was delayed because of the storms in January, but the beginning of the year saw me spending ten days with Island Darkroom: a great opportunity that really helped my project find its feet. 

In February the world changed of course, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which continues to mar the world with violence, loss and sadness, and it’s difficult to believe that this terrible war has dragged on now for almost a year. All we can do is hope for a resolution in 2023 that will end the needless suffering as the people of Ukraine continue to be an inspiration.

Earlier in February my writing was included in Echtrai Ed. 1 with some wonderful company, and that led to an engaging chat with the lovely and never still Helen Needham for the BBC Scotland Outdoors podcast. I also had writing published with Little Toller’s The Clearing, Paul Scraton’s online journal Elsewhere, Southlight Magazine and Poetry Scotland.

In May I read work at a symposium with The Sir Herbert Grierson Centre, and in September I gave a workshop on writing Landscape and Place as part of the 2022 Wayword Lit. Arts festival. In November I gave a paper at the University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt for the Practicing Place conference.

Finally, my work featured in the long awaited book Four Rivers:Deep Maps with a chapter on the River Don, tracing its sacred associations from source to sea and exploring how they have shaped the area’s geography and identity over time. The book was published by UWAP in late September. 

I’m nearing the end of my major work-in-progress now and hope to get it out there next year which looks set to be as busy as the last, with some teaching work lined up, and hopefully an academic publication on my research and a further conference in the summer. Beyond that I hope to do some more workshops and get my thesis in on time! 

Wishing you all the very best for the year ahead and hoping the world finds itself a little kinder in 2023.