TL; DR - I’ve published a new pamphlet (bit too fancy to call it a zine maybe?) called Holy Hills; doing some events - readings, workshops talks - in the coming months.
Hi
Well what a battle it is to be these days! I’m ok though - thriving ’n’ churning. Parenthood is a gift, and I’m gleeful a lot amongst all the tiredness and panics and scratching around. It also appears to be, if not a great rewriting, then a great reorganisation of the self. Nothing is the same as before but you don’t have too much time think about that because the kiddo changes so much, blooms like a different flower everyday, so you’re always on the back foot but the flowers you get to see.. woah now. Fatherhood suits me in ways I’m still learning. I’m a lucky man.
In art life I’m partly like ‘yeah! I’m on it!’ but for one reason or another my confidence has taken a knocking of late and my what-am-I-doing-and-why? worries have taken me aback a bit. There’s always murk in the backgrounds of our lives and it muddies the water often when it needn’t and it’s easy to be overwhelmed. I suppose it’s part of the terrain of just getting by in the world. I turned 43. Is that related? Probably? But I’m getting there!
I’ve been getting back into thinking about place and landscape again (like my Lie of the Land zine (restock coming soon!), or WHERE? (which is five years old now!)) and that’s been nice: trying to cast my net wider than just my life is probably healthy.
I’ve also been writing poems. I’ve found poetry to be a very special kind of thing. I don’t know much about it in the way someone who came up making poetry and being a poet might, because I came into it sideways. As in: I make zines that sometimes have poems in them and now I’ve started reading some of those poems out loud and suddenly it feels a bit different. Writing poems to me is like trying to solve a cryptic crossword - part logic and order, part rules, mostly imagination - that you’ve set yourself but forgotten the solutions for, like you’ve been leaving yourself breadcrumbs to follow to some kind of mini-revelation or joke or serious realisation or whatever.It feels good to be trying and I enjoying reading in public and learning about how to do it well.
It is strange though, that stepping sideways into an established world of POETRY; it seems to have rules and communities and procedures (this is how and where you send your poems so that someone might publish them and no you’re not allowed to share them while they’re being considered etc). I feel safer in the zine world where it’s hey you’ve made a zine whats in it? oh poems cool! rather than oh are these your ‘poems’? That said I’ve met only lovely poem people in Bristol and further afield online: it’s probably, as with all publishing and art, the infrastructure that puts me off and not always the people just trying to get by amongst it. There are some doofuses around though.
Anyway, I’ve just eaten a truly awful cookie from a Costa concession stand at the train station (off to London for the day). As for what next, I’m always cooking up new things; but which ones make it out of the pan? oven? and on to the plate (this is a really horrible metaphor) remains to be seen.
Here’s the news
Love
S x
P.S. I wrote this on my phone so I wonder if it’ll make any sense
Help Antiquated Future!
Portland, Oregon based zine/art/music distro and record label are an excellent force for good in the art world. They’ve carried my zines in the US for years now, have been consistently excellent to work with, championed me and helped keep me going. They’ve had a tough year, so if you’ve got an eye for some excellent music art literature zines stuff please consider buying something from them x
HOLY HILLS
"Cle Hills be holy in Shropshire" - John Leland (ca. 1503-1552)
This new pamphlet is sort of a follow-up to my book WHERE? and sort of a stab in the dark at how to squish together historical texts (newspapers, books, folklore), diary fragments, and images (collages mostly) to evoke a sense of being in a place that is very hard to know. Fragmentary texts, pictures, hinting at something but not quite saying it. It emerged from a series of walks taken on Titterstone Clee, and a period of archive research.
RIYL: W.G. Sebald, Weird Walk, Folklore, all that psychogeography stuff, local history, big hills.
Printed nice and fancy by Taylor Bros (Bristol). Gold foil stamped title on Colorplan Mid Green 270gsm cover, inners on Munken Polar Rough 150gsm.
£10/8/6 + P&P (sliding price scale as usual)
Upcoming events
Saturday 15th August - Reading poems as part of the launch for Andrew Hykel Mears’ new poetry pamphlet Rivering at the BookCellar in Bristol. Details here. Starts at 6pm
Friday 28th/Saturday 29th August - running a zine-making workshop with Rachel Sykes in Ludlow. Come join us and make a zine about a local story that matters to you! More info here.
Sunday 25th October - reading poems at Disruptive Verse, “a night of poetry that seeks to tackle and make sense of the times we live in” in Bristol. More info TBC.
April 13th 2027 - talking about my work in Manchester as part of Manchester Met’s Bunker Talks series at The Salutation Pub (upstairs), M15 6ED. Kicks of at 5.30pm. More info here.
O Hi buddy. Miss you. This is all so good to hear. Loving your dad joy. What a miracle and privilege it is. Still living in massive grandpa love fountain. We have a 10 month grandaughter now too which is joyous. Yeah - the poetry world ! I'm 'working on a collection' this summer, putting together a collection for 'proper' gatekeeper publication. Working with a poet mentor. We'll see how that goes. Keep on keeping on. Believe in yourself to do the stuff that only you can do.
Very much looking forward to reading Holy Hills!