I’m delighted to have writer and podcaster Susan Mathews as guest for this week’s newsletter. Season 2 of Susan’s podcast The Subverse has been my ‘go-to’ listening recently, and her thoughtful conversations around water have helped to...
It’s late Winter, or perhaps it’s early Spring. An uncertain season here in Orkney, either way. It can mean anything from shirtsleeves and birdsong to blizzarding snow and sometimes both of these in the same day. We’ve had some gentle days recently that saw the hens...
I was lucky enough to read an early copy of Victoria Bennet’s beautiful debut memoir “All My Wild Mothers”, just published by John Murray Press. I was immediately struck by the way she shows how our care for the natural world is inseparable from our care...
It’s not often that I sit down with a book of poetry and find myself so drawn into its world that I read it in long, deep draughts, like a novel. But this is the effect that my first encounter with the work of Canadian poet Don Domanski had on me. These are poems of...
In 2021 I was lucky enough to receive the Royal Scottish Academy William Littlejohn Award for excellence and innovation in water-based media. I used the award to support the creation of this series of large drawings on aluminium panel. These developed my use of a...
I was invited recently to make a presentation for a conference on “Eco-Creativity” organised by the Open University. I offered an invitation to pay attention to the water around and within you in all its familiarity and strangeness, to become enchanted by...
