Tag: pastoral

‘Growing food on the green world: J. H. Prynne’s agro-chemical pastoral in the Vale of Tintern’, article in Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism (Autumn 2018)

Abstract: (to download one of 50 free e-prints go here). This article reads the poetry of J. H. Prynne of the early- to mid-1970s through an ecocritical lens, arguing that this work responds to the language of a nascent environmentalism framed by the concerns of political ecology. It does so by drawing on Prynne’s archival… Continue reading ‘Growing food on the green world: J. H. Prynne’s agro-chemical pastoral in the Vale of Tintern’, article in Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism (Autumn 2018)

ASLE-UKI & Land2 2017 (2)––Pastorals: Landscapes of Transhumance

What is a sheep – a source of revenue, an organic and self-renewable resource, a grazing unit, a system of biochemical transfer leading to patterns of muscle and fat development, the symbol of a nostalgic rural economy […]? ––Henry Buller, ‘The Lively Process of Interdisciplinarity’, Area, 41.4 (2008) This panel brings together historians, artists, geographers,… Continue reading ASLE-UKI & Land2 2017 (2)––Pastorals: Landscapes of Transhumance

Langland to Langley: a poetry course

Detail from the Morley murals: what's going on here?

This Christmas I was invited by Natalie Joelle to design and co-convene as visiting lecturer a course at Morley College (a venerable adult education institution in Lambeth with Bawden and Ravilious murals of The Canterbury Tales on the walls of the refectory) entitled ‘Understanding Poetry: Langland to Larkin and Beyond’. The brief I was given… Continue reading Langland to Langley: a poetry course

Extracts from Forced Fingers in The Clearing

Really pleased to have some of a long new thing, Forced Fingers, in The Clearing, a great journal that ‘publishes writing and artwork concerned with landscape and place.’ It’s also attached to one of my favourite publishers, Little Toller Books, who do fine reprints of lost nature writing. The artwork — an amazing mash-up of… Continue reading Extracts from Forced Fingers in The Clearing