Lewis

New Essay on The Clearing

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‘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.

Island Darkroom Exhibition

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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 between 22nd July and 20th September, 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.

Reflections

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“No place remains static and unchanged, frozen in its past, but the past gives us a sense of place and belonging that helps shape our future, and this is what Lewis has shown me.”

Some thoughts on my recent residency on Lewis with Island Darkroom have been posted up on their site. I was very grateful for the opportunity to spend time there in February, and you can read the full account of what I have taken away from it, here:

Island Darkroom Residency

New Piece on Lewis Published.

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‘No land barer; and yet the moor was filled with untapped memory and story, locked away like the carbon stored within the peat…’

Very pleased to have a new piece of writing feature on Paul Scraton’s online blog Elsewhere: A Journal of Place. It has come out of wider work stemming from my recent residency on Lewis with Island Darkroom, and explores the legacy of the island through its impact on the work of poet Iain Crichton Smith. Click on the image above to read.

A Dream of Stones

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I drove to Calanais in the rain, looking for the stones. I found them there, standing tall in the mist, like a distant dream I had once dreamt but long forgotten, a silent memory. Did they walk this way those thousands of years ago? What gods and spirits did they dream of; what lost stories did they tell? Where do they dream now, long buried in the ground? Across Loch Ròg to Kirkibost the sleeping woman lies, and the Shining One waits in the west. Too many stories wait here, commodified even now: unreal place, resting in its unknown truth.