I’ve been working on a new commission recently. It’s based in the history books, in archives and faded memories, in carefully curated photographs, and scenes no one was supposed to see. Yet, I’ve taken to the fields. I’ve been wandering the streets of my local town, clambering through scrubland that’s (probably) private property. I’ve been searching and not searching, paying close attention to the rise and fall of the land, the turn of the streets, what sounds and smells are in the air, before I start to contemplate how any of this has changed in a hundred years.
This has become a regular part of my creative practice, a term I think I’m only using because 30% of my writing is grant applications, but it is true and fair to say that as a creative, I have a practice, and a lot of it involves skulking around fields.
I did this with Wake of the Whale, too. Took days off paid work to drive to a field and look at stones, imagining.
The year before I was writing Wake of the Whale, when I was …
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