A passage from Jaquetta Hawkes’ book A Land "When I have been working late on a summer night, I like to go out and lie on the patch of grass in our back garden … this hard ground presses my flesh against my bones and makes me agreeably conscious of my body." It always feels magical when someone puts into words an experience you enjoy. There is something fundamental about lying on grass, feeling the support of the earth beneath you, the warmth of the soil where it has soaked in the suns heat, thinking about the earth beneath you and the sky above.
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I have been taking part in the National Poetry Library’s 70 Poet Challenge, discovering 70 new-to-me poets. It has been a wonderful experience, immersing myself in new words and perspectives. From Mohammed El-Kurd’s powerful collection Rifqa, to Ae Hee Lee’s beautiful explorations on what it means to be an immigrant. The little booklet I picked up in the Poetry Library a couple of months ago has become dog-eared, always tucked into my bag, ready to record new-to-me names.
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Campions have self-seeded in the cracks of the paving slabs in my garden, their pink flowers emerging at the same time as the Pink Moon.
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Recently I have started collecting words on desire lines. I love the poetry of their name and the way they remind me of the Richard Long piece ‘A line made by walking’. Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts write in Edgelands that they are ‘a record of collective short-cuttings’. Rhys Owen Williams in his poem Desire Line writes ‘In the receptive earth we rewrite boundaries’ (the poem, by the way, appears in the excellent collection Byways edited by Cherry Potts, published by Arachne Press). Robert Macfarlane’s take is that they are ‘paths and tracks made over time by the wishes and feet of walkers, especially those paths that run contrary to design or planning. Free-will ways.’ Other names for them I find are desire paths, cow paths, pig trails, buffalo trace, bootleg trails, goat track and “Olifantenpad” (elephant paths). Apparently in Finland, urban planners note the paths made after the first snowfall to inform their work. Sometimes they are used as a metaphor for migration.
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Some writing I have enjoyed recently:
Doug Baulos’ essay ‘Memory Palace’ (read here: https://tatter.org/issues/issue-1/articles/memory-palace/)
Dispersals by Jessica J. Lee
Appalachian Elegy by bell hooks
Unearthing by Kyo Maclear
Susannah Clapp’s essay ‘On Pockets’ in the LRB
‘Granite is the hardest word’ by Jennifer Hunt (read here: https://www.littletoller.co.uk/the-clearing/granite-is-the-hardest-word-by-jennifer-hunt/)
Love Jacquetta!! It's wild to me that A Land isn't better known amongst nature writers/readers today.
"It always feels magical when someone puts into words an experience you enjoy." Isn't it just! And good to discover your Substack too - very much in keeping with my own life-long preoccupations. It's a long time since I read A Land, I'll have to see if it's still on our over-abundant bookshelves, thanks for the nudge!