Following the interest generated by an online talk we gave to the Scottish Centre of Geopoetics last year – and the large amount of material we covered but were not able to use when preparing it – Elizabeth Rimmer and I have developed a new project. Based around a poetics zine, it is called Ceasing Never – after a line from Keats’s 1816 sonnet ‘On the Grasshopper and Cricket’:

The Poetry of earth is never dead:    

  When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,    

  And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run    

From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;    

That is the Grasshopper’s—he takes the lead       

  In summer luxury,—he has never done    

  With his delights; for when tired out with fun    

He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.    

The poetry of earth is ceasing never:    

  On a lone winter evening, when the frost      

    Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills    

The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever,    

  And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,    

    The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.

Elizabeth explains more about it all on her own blog, Burned Thumb, here, and so far there are also contributions to CN from John Bolland on the poetics of climate change; and from me on the poetics and politics of describing – after I participated earlier this month in a wonderful ‘descriptive walk’ at StAnza poetry festival, led by Juliana Capes. Do have a look, and join the discussion if you want to add to, comment on, or question something there.

More to follow shortly on a new poetry/walking project I’m really thrilled to be involved in; very best springtime and equinoctial wishes from Pentlandside for now.