Crafting the Way

Forest Of Thought Podcast

With Ingrid (on the left) last year visiting Dougald

I’ve been thinking about the importance of questions in my life for the best part of a decade since asking some life-changing ones in the Transylvanian woods one day. Sometimes, when talking with a new person, I wonder, ‘Is that question you just asked me a portal to the wild world or the trapdoor of a cage?’

No such thoughts trouble me when speaking with Ingrid Rieser, whom I first met six year ago via Dougald Hine . That doesn’t mean Ingrid glosses over things, or lacks depth in her interviews on Forest of Thought Podcast, the opposite is true. But she works akin to the the famous fable of Aesop, The North Wind and the Sun. Listening to her interviews, you hear guests warm up and take off a few layers, so to speak.

Well, the same happened to me when we recorded this podcast with a live audience at CEMUS in Uppsala Universitet. Her questions went right to the heart of what I do and why I do it. The questions from the floor after the break for fika were also excellent, and led to me talk publicly about my personal daily practice for the first time, including how it came about and what it seems to have cultivated. In all, it was a somewhat exposing event, but not in a bad way. I feel a bit like a rock that had got used to being covered with a certain amount of shaggy moss and lichen, and that I just got (mostly) gently browsed by a herd of passing reindeer. Well, I guess you’ll get to see my sparkly quartz veins, after all.

Thanks to Ingrid, for her care and interest in this strange Dorset woman, my piles of rocks, bags of galls and sudden, expansive gestures, none of which you will see on this purely audio podcast…

This Week’s Good Things: two really good courses for you!

1: This Painted Earth. I am teaching a brand new in-person painting course with my friend, renowned artist Rima Staines, in July in Devon, UK. All are welcome to this unique 5-day course delving into making soulful art with natural paints. We have been planning this for two years but were thwarted last year by the sudden closure of Schumacher College, where we had originally booked to teach it. At last we have the perfect Dartmoor venue. Details and booking are here.

2: Writing Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Other Worlds, A six-week online writing course with Nick Hunt. Wednesdays 30th April – 4th June, 6pm-8pm BST, Online

I have shared the excellent books of my Dark Mountain Project colleague Nick Hunt here before. Now he is taking his popular writing course online and I highly recommend it, having enjoyed his teaching in the past at Schumacher College. Here’s more info from his newsletter.

This course is an introduction to writing imaginative and speculative fiction – from sci-fi and fantasy to alternate history. You will learn techniques for world-building and peopling different realities; imagining utopias, dystopias and possible futures; how to write strong characters and structure your storyline; and how to make the worlds you create vivid and alive.

Following in the footsteps of writers like Ursula K. Le Guin and Margaret Atwood, we will examine how speculative writing plays a deeply subversive role, destabilising ‘the way things are’ and allowing our imagination to break free of its bindings. Imagining different pasts, and futures, enables different presents.

The course will combine teaching and reading – with inspirations ranging from China Miéville, Adrian Tchaikovsky and Octavia E. Butler to Alan Garner and William Golding – with writing exercises, group discussions, feedback and structured writing time. By the end of the six weeks, you will have completed a solid beginning to a new story, or deepened and expanded a work already in progress. Whether you are a published author or a curious beginner, all you need is something to write on and your imagination.

The cost of the course is £240 (£40 per two-hour session).

All inquiries: scrutiny@gmail.com