I've been happily distracted for a couple of days creating a slideshow for my reading at Wigtown Book Festival on Wednesday 3 October when my new
pamphlet from Roncadora Press, The Dark
Farms, will be officially launched.
The Dark Farms
focuses on the Galloway Forest Park, its depopulated glens, shrinking
agriculture and extraordinarily dark skies. I worked on The Dark Farms
for eight months during 2011, walking the Forest, talking to residents and
reading old books and maps. I also
spent quite a few hours dodging 2011’s steady rain in Newton Stewart Museum,
which was where I first encountered the Bull Mask, and the Necklace of Horse's Teeth.
What emerged is poetry about very remote
places; saturated stones; the ghosts of sheep; the vast night skies. I took photos of abandoned sheepfolds, farms with their windows bricked up, rotting carthorse stalls.
Award-winning publisher
Roncadora Press is owned by artist Hugh Bryden, who has created a handmade
‘black book’ for The Dark Farms,
complete with black edged pages, poems lit only by stars and an embossed front
cover. If so moved, you can buy it at
Wigtown Book Festival and then via www.hughbryden.com.
The Dark Farms is in the Main
Hall in the County Buildings at 1.30pm, tickets cost £6. Please book via the Book Festival website -
click here.
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