The Tides of March

Gathering elements

River Stour, reeds for pens, windfall bough trimmings of willow for charcoal, pleasingly matching sallow anorak not deliberate.

Gathering

This is a ‘between essays week’ so I have a few good things to share and then I am off to pack my bags and many boxes for a huge 3 day photoshoot for my next book. An old friend has agreed to drive me to my publisher’s place the other side of southern England, where I will spend three days demonstrating pouring gums, measuring pigments and mulling grounds for my next book. One day and two nights in the middle of that I will be away elsewhere for the return to earth of my late friend. I think it’ll be a bit of a week, so forgive my brevity today.

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Book

The upcoming book will be about wild, foraged, ancient, repurposed and plastic-free drawing materials, a direct follow up to Found and Ground, which was about foraged pigments and paints. Today I spent two deeply satisfying hours in the drizzle in my local urban environment, including the banks of the river Stour by a big roundabout and the overhanging and overgrown hedges of my neighbours, snipping dead bamboo here, gathering crumbly broken deep red bricks there, trimming hollow dried buddleia stems poking out by the railway cutting and gleaning windfall willow. This next book will be set as much in town as country, will blend old and new, the precious and the discarded. So, pretty much my usual MO here, but with things rather than thoughts.

River Stour at Iford

Teaching

This summer, I’ll be teaching at Schumacher College and Embercombe, both in Devon UK. I’ll also be popping up in USA, France and elsewhere. If you’d like to know more, it’s all here.

Poem

I love the way the winter trees always lift my heart up and open it, with their integrity laid bare, like a promise. Today reminded me of this poem from the same season in 2018.

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Preserve Open

I choose the circle not the square
I want the bare bones of belonging
not the drapery
which holds dust in its folds
made of all my shed skin and dirt,
and yours too

How many more years 
will I witness winter trees
fuzzing with leaf?
their dark branching lines 
against England’s grey skies.
these black bones support
the muscles of my mind’s eye

I cannot know.
so I cultivate open
and then
I preserve open



14.02.18

These fellows were at work in the rosemary, last week

Overheard Conversations

Last week

Dougald Hine

published our conversation for the first of his new video / podcast series. It was an honour to talk together in public, and I really enjoyed the evening. We mainly discussed beauty, (which is a hint that truth leaves, I feel). The first 40 mins are now publicly available, here. The paid subscribers’ version, with an extra 20 min questions session is below the paywall. Enjoy.

See you next week with an essay, or something approaching one.