picts

New Essay Published on THE CLEARING

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‘I was left breathless by the wind – and the view – and Lewis took on a suddenly different feel: an awe-inspiring island of sense and frightening clarity; a lost world of elements; a dreamed-of place caught between sea and sky.’

A new essay on The Clearing – Little Toller Books’ online journal of Nature, Landscape and Place. 

‘Between Sea and Sky’ comes out of a research trip to Lewis back in 2022 and explores the changing land use on the islands. I met with a modern day crofter who, like many new generation crofters, is moving away from traditional crofting practices and using her land to plant native woodland instead of keeping livestock. She talked movingly about her experience relocating to and living on the islands, and of the deep connection she has found with the land. 

I had a great stay on Lewis and wrote a lot about my time there – it was a homecoming of sorts – a return – having lived in Stornoway for a while back in the mid-noughties. It’s not an easy place to live, especially as an incomer, but it’s a place I keep going back to. 

Thanks as ever to editor Jon Woolcott and to crofter Susanne Erbida for taking time to meet with me during my visit.

You can read the essay through the link below. I’d love to hear what you think of it.

Between Sea and Sky

The Don: A Sacred River

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“Ian Grosz takes the reader on a journey, often on foot, to the half-hidden spiritual locales of the Don. Replete with historical and archaeological resonance, his journey through road, trail, stream and field is an elemental dance of often elusive elements. Spiritual faith as a palimpsest of earth, rock, water and culture remains a central theme as he leads us through histories of Gaelic saints, Pictish stones, cairns and Aberdeenshire stone circles with their distinctive recumbent stone. Places of transformation and spirituality are never far away from the divine river. The ancient goddess endures in a looping and recursive movement that exists differently from linear formulations of time and space.”

Neil Curtis and Jo Jones, Introduction, Four Rivers, Deep Maps, pp. 21-22.

The book Four Rivers: Deep Maps was published by UWAP and had an official launch early in Nov. There will be a second launch in the UK in the first quarter of 2023. The book has a diverse range of creative and scholarly responses to the two regions of Perth, WA, and Aberdeenshire. My own contribution is reviewed here by Neil Curtis in the book’s introduction:

UK stockists may be available next year, but if that’s piqued your interest, you can order the book directly from the publishers. Click on the image to go direct to UWAP for this and their other titles.

Scotland Outdoors

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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.