‘Each time I’ve been to Fingal’s Cave, the sense of natural magnitude dwarfing human endeavour has been inescapable. Turner’s painting amplified the feeling: a luminescent, natural arch opening into the unfathomable past’: Fiona Stafford on Staffa.

I’d encourage everyone to read this heart-breakingly beautiful piece by @wildtwin.bsky.social intoday’s paper & then, if you haven’t already done so, buy a copy of ‘Wild Twin’ from @littletollerbooks.bsky.social amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Predictably, at the end of Induction Week, I’m spending Saturday evening in bed having come down with some sort of bug. Can anyone recommend any good place/landscape/geography podcasts that can take me elsewhere as I feel sorry for myself? Thanks!

Exploring the explorers’ maps: free hybrid RGS-IBG lecture by Katherine Parker on 28 October www.rgs.org/events/upcom...

The Sound of the Fens: wonderful BBC Open Country in which Martha Kearney visits Helpston & Fen Edge to explore how the landscape has changed since the days of John Clare. Features Francesca Mackenney discussing Clare’s soundscapes www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

‘I want to make some kind of gesture. An offering. A mark of passing. And to leave it here. Tied to the land’: about to re-immerse myself - for the nth time - in the extraordinary deep map of Richard Skelton’s ‘Landings’.

Just spent much of the train commute home dreaming of walking into this painting (‘Washdaybreak’, 2003) by Martin Greenland martingreenland.co.uk

Delighted to see the new special issue of the Journal of Historical Geography out: Reflections on histories and philosophies of geography. Edited by Heike Jöns, myself, Pauline Couper & Federico Ferretti: #geosky www.sciencedirect.com/journal/jour... 🧵

Mapping the Tube: 1863-2023 - exhibition at The Map House - from 25 October to 30 November - exploring the evolution of London’s Tube system and the London Underground map. The exhibition will feature some of Harry Beck’s hand-drawn & annotated manuscripts www.themaphouse.com/exhibitions/...

‘The Outrun’: special preview screening of Nora Fingscheidt’s adaptation of Amy Liptrot’s remarkable memoir at HOME in Manchester on Thursday, 26 September homemcr.org/film/the-outru…

ICYMI: The Centre for Place Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University is keen to support applications for 2025 Leverhulme Early Career Fellowships. Please get in touch via email if you’re interested & want to find out more about the internal selection process www.mmu.ac.uk/research/fel...

JOB: lecturer in Geography (f/t, perm). We're looking for a cultural geographer to join us at York St John Uni from January. Closing date 13 Oct. Details online at jobs.yorksj.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx...

Apologies to those who already know this, but Hookland is a pre-enchanted landscape you already own. It's there for your use if needed or wanted. Fill your boots.

‘Making Geography Matter: Opening up the Doreen Massey Archive’ - a brilliant funded PhD at the Open University. Closing date: 7 January 2025 www.oocdtp.ac.uk/making-geogr...

Spent much of the day thinking about the past of the Portico Library thanks to the doctoral research of Michelle Ravenscroft; spent the evening in a trustees meeting & thinking about the Library’s exciting future in the centre of Manchester www.theportico.org.uk/reuniting-po...

‘What we need to question is bricks, concrete, glass, our table manners, our utensils, our tools, the way we spend our time, our rhythms. To question that which seems to have ceased forever to astonish us…’ (Georges Perec).

Spent a wonderful day yesterday at the Liverpool Travel Seminar at the Bluecoat reflecting on & celebrating the field-shaping work of @timyoungs.bsky.social Many thanks to all involved for making it happen.

Publication day for the new, expanded version of 'Marshland' - out now via Influx Press www.influxpress.com/marshland 'Layered London, black, funny, marshy, full of horrible vigour & hidden channels.' – M. John Harrison.

The Cumbria Wildlife Trust fundraiser to secure and ecologically restore Skiddaw has just hit the half-way mark. Please donate if you can: @georgemonbiot.bsky.social @wanderinggaia.bsky.social @irishrainforest.bsky.social @alexvont.bsky.social

Here’s the paperback edition of A Book of Noises from Granta Books. It will be on sale in October

Early morning commute to work: ‘This writing business is going really well as I’ve written over 500 words - all of them excellent - & it’s not even 8am.’ Early evening commute home after a day of meetings: ‘I don’t know what a sentence is.’

Today has been spent travelling from Lowestoft to Romney Marsh to Dorset to the Upper Thames in meetings with some of our brilliant postgraduate researchers in the Centre for Place Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University. Today has been a good day.

Here’s an updated link www.mmu.ac.uk/research/fel...

The Centre for Place Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University is keen to support applications for 2025 Leverhulme Early Career Fellowships. Please get in touch via email if you’re interested & want to find out more about the internal selection process mmu.ac.uk/research/fello…

‘All my life I have restlessly been looking for a home, for a room. And it was here all along’: I’ve just been left breathless by the beautifully traumatic final chapter in Wild Twin by @wildtwin.bsky.social Published by @littletollerbooks.bsky.social on 18 Sept littletoller.co.uk/shop/books/lit…

The end of summer . . .

Delighted to see my colleague Andrew Michael Hurley's novel STARVE ACRE getting the in-cinemas-now film treatment. A nice, gnarly bit of folk horror as the evenings draw in.

Trespass: call for submissions - essays, fiction, poetry, interviews, book reviews, music, visual art and photography - for the brilliant ‘Elsewhere: A Journal of Place’. Deadline: 30 September www.elsewhere-journal.com/submissions

Stunned that, in the brilliant Wild Twin, @wildtwin.bsky.social refers to ‘Cherry Blossom (AKA Boot Polish Head), the man [in Liverpool] who paints pretend hair on his skull with shoe polish’ as, for years, I’ve assumed that he was a product of my childhood imagination or family myth-making . . .

‘Nostalgia is an illness, perhaps. And yet, it’s beautiful. I live in memory. I live in the present moment but the past is here too, sometimes shimmering, sometimes dimming in the same space as the now’: #amreading Wild Twin by @wildtwin.bsky.social from @littletollerbooks.bsky.social

WILD TWIN BOOK LAUNCH, 25TH September. Details here: www.waterstones.com/events/an-ev...

Albert Vincent Reade, ‘Morecambe Bay June 1932’.

#jobfairy - alert VERY TIGHT DEADLINE of 8th Sept - assoc prof (senior lecturer) in history & heritate at University of Birmingham, pref for geog. spec in Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, or North America. Permanent position www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DJG439/a... (not my dept so I've no inside info) 🗃️

Please follow, repost & like the Nature Writing feed & don't forget to add #naturewriting to posts about your reading &/or writing based on the natural world. Thank you 💚 bsky.app/profile/did:...

‘I’m in car park world, a space with its own politics, culture & memory. Not an unplace, but a place apart’ (Gareth E Rees): Bank Holiday Monday landscape.

Landscape studies by the Kendal-based artist, Lela Harris, who has received great critical acclaim for her brilliant ‘Black Lancastrians’ exhibition at Judges’ Lodgings, Lancaster lelaharris.co.uk

‘We pass and fade on the face of the/ earth, sun-nets drifting over distant hillsides, the cloud/ shadows. We become the half-sensed ghosts’ (‘Moor’): #amreading - slowly, sadly - the unsurprisingly wonderful ‘Cairn’ by Kathleen Jamie.

Skylines: Liverpool & Marseille; this week & last.

It’s arrived! It’s great to be able to hold a copy of ‘The Routledge Handbook of Literary Geographies’ I’ve edited with Neal Alexander. An enormous thank you to the 41 contributors & the editorial team at Routledge for making it happen.

‘The prettiest city in France doesn’t hide its wounds. It is sincere. That’s all’ (Philippe Pujol): spent a few days in Marseille last week & completely fell in love with the place.

An excellent paper of ideas for teaching creative writing : “an interdisciplinary curriculum plan”providing opportunities to notice & reflect, notice & record emotional memories; imagine & speculate.A focus on nature: actively increase their scientific knowledge “ www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

One month to go until Wild Twin hits the shops! Details and Preorder below: www.littletoller.co.uk/shop/books/l...

Early notice that the Centre for Place Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University will be keen to support applications for the next round of Leverhulme Early Career Fellowships. Please get in touch via email if you’re interested & want to find out more about the internal selection process.

‘The Importance of Experience: Supporting Pupils’ Creative Writing about the Natural World’: new open access article in ‘Changing English’ by Christopher Hanley, Jennifer Rowntree & myself in which we reflect on our ‘Voices of the Future’ project www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Just thinking: if I was Wordsworth, I could get a good sonnet sequence out of this misfortune . . .

The River Sorgue in Provence which features in Petrarch’s poetry & in which I lost my wedding ring a few days ago. I’d like to say that the literary association brings some comfort but, right now, I’d do absolutely anything to have that ring again.

"Literary Mapping in the Digital Age",edited by @drdavidcooper.bsky.social, Christopher Donaldson & Patricia Murrieta-Flores, is the first intensive examination of digital literary cartography, exemplifying the critical & creative potentials of digital #literarymapping #DigitalHumanities

So, how are people getting on in this place?

Really excited to be continuing Tree Talks with @abdavis.bsky.social and Wordsworth Grasmere in 2024. See the details for our first online event below! 🌳

I thought that I was tired of Turner’s ‘Rain, Steam & Speed’, as I’ve used it in teaching so much, but then I stood in front of it in the National Gallery again for the first time in years.