The Rails – James Walbourne & Kami Thompson.
Two of our guests at this Summer’s Port Eliot Festival picked up some good press recently: The Rails, whose debut LP comes out on Island in April (‘pink’ label, natch), were give a new band profile on 10 January and our Book of the Month for January, Sonic Wonderland: A Scientific Odyssey of Sound by Trevor Cox was well reviewed by the esteemed David Hendy in The Observer last Sunday.
Marchlands – by the historian Philip Dunshea and published on The Clearing just before Christmas:
I’m going for a walk in the Marchlands. This is where England and Wales are supposed to meet, but it’s always been a bit less precise than that.
Also new on The Clearing, and obviously a must read, a bulletin from Budapest by Tim Dee.
He Ain’t Going Nowhere: a fantastic piece of writing on the legend that is Guy Clark one of the great storyteller-songwriters of our time (via Texas Monthly).
Amy Liptrot on the lonely trail of Orkney’s corncrakes (via aeon magazine) This is a different kind of nightlife. The life I had in the city — bars and clubs — is no longer there for me but these nevernights — marking off grid references and following maps in the mist — they are my own. I’ve found no corncrakes tonight but dawn is coming, I’ve got a flask of coffee and I can hear seals.
On January 2 Robert Macfarlane and Rebecca Solnit gave a talk on Nature Writing (via Orion Magazine). Two celebrated authors joined Orion’s Editor Jennifer Sahn for a wide-ranging discussion of how the genre of nature writing is evolving. Listen here.
Ghost Species from Granta magazine on Vimeo.
Ghost Species: Robert Macfarlane and Justin Partyka visit the Fens. A film from 2009 via Granta.
The Memory Band: Our Navigation – Field Reports.
From Stephen Cracknell: At the end of last year we uploaded a series of field reports to our blog detailing the search for the Harrow Way undertaken around our latest album which was inspired by the legend and the experience of the lost road. The reports were accompanied by a series of simple slide shows and videos. You can now watch all the videos in a single youtube playlist here. All the field reports are now assembled on a single page on our website.
Thames21 Photography Competition:entries welcome until 14 February.
Thames21 are excited to announce the launch of our 4th annual photography competition. We are inviting budding photographers to enter images of ‘London’s Waterways’ for the chance to win great prizes and to have your photograph seen by thousands exhibited at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.