Category: Landscape

Landscape, Literature, Uncategorized

Wandering Through – Robert Walser’s A Little Ramble (1914)

I savour Robert Walser’s fragmentary work.  Though I’ve read several volumes of his collected sketches, I’ve yet to read any of his full length novels.  I have some trepidation about them, almost definitely unfounded, in that it is the formal qualities of such short snippets that draws me into his optimistic depression, his meandering playfulness and his utter enchantment with the everyday.  A particular favourite … Continue reading Wandering Through – Robert Walser’s A Little Ramble (1914)

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Art, Landscape, Uncategorized

Responses: Eileen Agar’s Butterfly Bride (1938)

“Once upon a time, I, Zhuangzi, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly.  I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Zhuangzi.” Looking at Eileen Agar’s Butterfly Bride (1938) is to look into the dreams of insects.  Or perhaps these are our dreams of insects, where our waking moments are … Continue reading Responses: Eileen Agar’s Butterfly Bride (1938)

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Landscape, Literature, Psychogeography, Short Film, Uncategorized

Short Film – Greenteeth

Above is Greenteeth, my film adaptation of the short story by Gary Budden which can be read in his upcoming volume of short stories.  It is currently up for a fantasy award and follows the pressures on a young woman in a struggling part of north London whose social worries begin manifest in more folkloric ways through the legend of Jenny Greenteeth.  The film came … Continue reading Short Film – Greenteeth

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Film, Landscape, Uncategorized

Fox Hunting and Class in Wyrd Landscape Cinema

There are few acts that occur in the rural landscape that are as vile or as brutal as fox hunting.  It is an act that highlights the class divisions still present in this country and one that does so more powerfully than most other “country pursuits”.  Aside from the obvious power on display by those of the upper classes who still, quite illegally, partake in … Continue reading Fox Hunting and Class in Wyrd Landscape Cinema

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Film, Landscape, Uncategorized

Heart Of Glass (1976) – Optimism in Destruction

On a rock, there sits a man lost in thought.  Or perhaps he is not thinking at all and is instead letting the landscape around him fill his thoughts unconsciously.  Werner Herzog’s 1976 film, Heart of Glass (Herz aus Glas), has one of the director’s strongest opening set of images as the main character of the film sits in a foggy Bavarian landscape with life … Continue reading Heart Of Glass (1976) – Optimism in Destruction

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Art, Landscape, Uncategorized

Responses: Eric Ravilious’ Cerne Abbas Giant (1939)

A naked man lies on a Dorset hill whilst another is painting him, quickly.  Eric Ravilious is on a fleeting trip to just north of Dorchester and the war, already broken out, is on his mind.  He paints the man, the land around and the humanity of the hills, quickly.  The man is the Cerne Abbas Giant, a mysterious earthwork of a primitive man with … Continue reading Responses: Eric Ravilious’ Cerne Abbas Giant (1939)

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Film, Interview, Landscape, Literature, Psychogeography, Uncategorized

Interview: Grant Gee + James Leyland Kirby (The Caretaker) on W.G. Sebald + Hauntology

For a recent symposium on Hauntology, I gave a paper on the links between the philosophy of hauntological ideas with the work and W.G. Sebald.  The subject had been interesting me for a while, not least because the jump between the style of the former and the thematic ideas of the latter are the amalgamation that I’m currently aiming for in my own fiction writing.  … Continue reading Interview: Grant Gee + James Leyland Kirby (The Caretaker) on W.G. Sebald + Hauntology

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Folk Horror, Landscape, Literature, Psychogeography, Short Film

Trailer – Green Teeth

Above is the trailer for my only narrative film this year, Green Teeth.  There has been a huge gap in my film projects recently, caused by writing a second book and having a huge chunk of time taken up with a project that fell through late last year.  Green Teeth as a project came along quite by chance when adventuring on several walks with the … Continue reading Trailer – Green Teeth

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Folk Horror, Landscape, Literature, Uncategorized

Owls and Flowers: Alan Garner’s The Owl Service At 50

I cannot remember when I first read Alan Garner’s The Owl Service (1967); like its inspiration, The Mabinogion, or the Stone of Gronw that sits at the centre of its mystery, it seems to have always been here.  It’s an unusual feeling because the novel is not particularly old by standards of literature – it turns fifty on the 21st of August – and yet it … Continue reading Owls and Flowers: Alan Garner’s The Owl Service At 50

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Landscape, Literature, Uncategorized

Chasing The Ghost – Excavating Sebald’s Portraits

So much has been written about W.G. Sebald and the use of photographs in his novels that it seems almost fruitless to write further around the subject.  With it being one of the defining features of his work, and with a rapidly increasing library of volumes and handbooks exploring the writer’s legacy, I struggled to initially frame the subject I want to write about here: … Continue reading Chasing The Ghost – Excavating Sebald’s Portraits

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