Anna Dillon

I love the recent artworks which have been created by Anna Dillon.

They are called Wessex Airscapes. They are on display at Radley College through September.

They were created in collaboration with aerial photographer Hedley Thorne.

Go to Anna's website and for each painting you will see that there is a link to a short sound file which tells the landscape story of each painting, including something of the history and geology of the locations... a really nice additional element.

River

 A new film, which has had an input from Robert MacFarlane.

River––a film I wrote w/ the awesome director @jenpeedom, narrated by Willem Dafoe––premiered this week at Telluride Film Festival.
Trailer here: https://t.co/COn4S644Ct
Happy that the first reviews really seem to get what we hoped to achieve in the film.https://t.co/FF7B31KHY3

— Robert Macfarlane (@RobGMacfarlane) September 4, 2021

See the trailer here

 

Sidmouth Cliff Collapse

Down to Sidmouth this afternoon, and I saw the new cliff collapses which happened over the weekend - there were five of them it seems. I check on these each year I come down to Devon as they were used as a case study of coastal erosion and management in the first edition of the OCR A and OCR B GCSE Geography textbooks I co-wrote for Hodder back in the day. 

While there, I saw a cameraman filming inserts for the evening news, and the presenter was then live from Sidmouth this evening.

There were two landslides visible here... a larger one in the background.

Living on the Edge

Another helpful article about coastal erosion - this time on the Holderness coast near Skipsea.

It includes some helpful maps, images and diagrams including a map showing the lost villages.

A useful Flourish graph is also included, which can be embedded...

The Trash Islands

One of my holiday reads is Alastair Bonnett's 'The Age of Islands'. He mentions the Trash Islands campaign which tried to get them recognised as a country by the United Nations.

This was part of a campaign back in 2018 to raise awareness of the issue of ocean plastics and the accumulation in gyres.

Landscapes... moving through...

Tania Kovats talking @artsresearch of the value of slow journeys and asks the question ‘As you move through a landscape does it move through you ?’ #WaterWorks2021 pic.twitter.com/V8Afh0GmRV

— Clarke&Witt (@Attention2place) June 30, 2021

Arctic Dreams - on the radio

I've spoken and blogged about this book many times, and you can now listen to extracts from it on Radio 4 as it has been selected, around 35 years after its first UK publication as the 'Book of the Week'.

A heads-up that, to my delight, Barry Lopez's masterpiece Arctic Dreams (1986) will be Book of the Week on @BBCRadio4 this week, starting 09.45am today.
The book––and the writer––that made me a writer.
Barry passed away in December this year.https://t.co/Eo8vKQKIV0

— Robert Macfarlane (@RobGMacfarlane) June 21, 2021

Barry Lopez is someone whose work has been important to me throughout my career.

Catch up with the episodes here.

In Episode One of Arctic Dreams Barry Lopez reflects on his first encounters with the surprisingly varied and resilient inhabitants of the polar north and on modern man’s vexed relationship with this beguiling continent. In his breath-taking natural, social and cultural history of the Arctic, Lopez reveals the essential mystery and beauty of a continent that has enchanted man's imagination and ambition since time immemorial. 

Written well over a quarter of a century ago, Lopez's visionary account of his journey across the polar caps is a celebration of the Arctic in all its guises. 

A hostile landscape of ice, freezing oceans and dazzling skyscapes, home to millions of diverse animals and people, it is also the backdrop to massive migrations by land, sea and air and the setting of epic exploratory voyages. 

In timeless, prophetic prose, as meditative and memorable as the land it describes, Arctic Dreams poses fundamental questions about how we should cherish our ever more vulnerable planet. 

Arctic Dreams was written by Barry Lopez. 

It is read by Kyle Soller and abridged by Richard Hamilton

This edition is the copy I have, as described in this blog post on City of Tongues.

I bought it from the Hull University bookshop in 1986.