Archipelago: Winter Edition
New issue of Archipelago now available from Clutag Press. Featuring contributions from, Norman Ackroyd, Norman MacCaig, Robert Macfarlane, Alice Oswald, Katherine Rundell. Visit their website and note the new blog.
Robert Macfarlane on Kurt Jackson
pic: Caroline Jackson The introduction to the catalogue for Kurt Jackson’s exhibition of recent works, currently on show at The Redfern Gallery, London. By Robert Macfarlane ‘As I watch the world’, wrote Nan Shepherd in 1945, ‘it arches its back, and each layer of the landscape bristles’. It’s a typically brilliant observation about observation from [...]
Oysteropolis
illustration by Jon McNaught Words by Michael Smith. An extract from this years Caught by the River book, On Nature. Walking along the shoreline in the pearly evening light, the room above the tennis courts full of stoner kids rehearsing their floydy tunes, wah wah guitars and jazzy drums floating out of the window, which [...]
Mother, Brother, Lover
Mother, Brother, Lover: Selected Lyrics of Jarvis Cocker (Hardback) Review by Frank Cottrell Boyce. What are the lyrics for? Clearly there are some – a handful – of rock and pop lyrics that communicate a universal emotion with clarity and power – Jolene, Folsom Prison Blues, That’ll be the Day, Rainy Night in Soho. But [...]
Klüb Gütenberg presents…
27 November 2011 // Miscellany
Klüb Gütenberg is a new monthly night of words and music co-hosted by Rough Trade Books and the Quietus website. In December the KG bill features British Sea Power’s East Sussex Jonathan Richman tribute band, Professor Tim Birkhead on birds and sex, Roy Wilkinson reading from his book Do It For Your Mum, plus other [...]
Pint by the River: Beer of the Roses (Part 1)
By Ben McCormick & Roger Clapham BM: Yorkshire. Land of flat caps, too many sheepdog trials and the curmudgeon. Loser of the original Wars of the Roses and, amusingly, relegated to the second tier of County Cricket again this year. It’s England’s largest county, despite the modernisation of some parts into Humberside and Cleveland, and [...]
Secret Songs of Birds
Ever wanted to hear a curve-billed thrasher at 50 per cent speed? Roy Wilkinson on an intriguing CD of birdsong from the British Library. The common quail is said to call ‘wet my lips’, seemingly begging for booze, or maybe something else. The snipe’s aerial drumming gives it the nickname The Galloping Horseman Of Lapland. [...]
Allotment Watch: November
25 November 2011 // Allotment Watch
by Nina Walsh I have heard many times over and experienced for myself, the powerful cleansing and calm that gardening can bring to a busy, chattering mind. A means to relax the body from the stress of modern life and a time for solitary reflection, gardening can literally be our saviour. This was never so [...]
Maggot Vending Machine Appeal
24 November 2011 // An Antidote To Indifference //Miscellany
dear jeff please could you put out the following appeal for information on caught by the river maggot vending machines and you as part of an ongoing project to plot the whereabouts of ‘rotomatic’ and other brands of maggot vending machines (see caught by the river entry 18/10/07) a current map of which will be [...]
Music Book Reader Bulletin
24 November 2011 // music book reader
Even More Rock Family Trees by Pete Frame. Omnibus Press 32 (very large) pages Paperback Review by Andy Childs. I am going to have to admit to a significant degree of bias this month as Pete Frame, author of this unique and indispensible volume is my very good friend, luncheon partner, correspondent (he lives in [...]
