Jen Ratcliffe

Gather yourself for the coming season under the moon: worms, battles and lunacy on todays blog + Daily Nature Community Roundup 🌕 The most ever entries ever! Thank you all💙 tinyurl.com/DNHMoon #DailyNature #NatureWriting #Photography #HuntersMoon #Lunacy #Environment

The honey-glazed effect poured over the red & gold trees of October, when only fleetingly does soft sunlight burst through falcon-grey clouds…

All days are blue. Some thick ink: stick, burst nib Others glow deep, oceans within oceans out of reach. Teal eyes with morning tea, velvet rolls of childhood discos, sliced Satan's bolette, Backdrop to flight - the wings that traced it. Life is blue. Pick your point enter the view. #poetry #blue

#dailynature from the train

Great nature substack by @jenratcliffe.bsky.social jenratcliffe.substack.com?r=2ufyx3&utm... Might be up your canal too @finstumpf.bsky.social

Storms are raging, hatches are battoned, I get dizzy from rain - remove the memory of drought, but please don't make the water shout.

The gloaming drips Like neglected wet ironwork. Two ducks push through The unblinking eye Of the bridge hole. Bedside the towpath Brambles crouch Like pouncing panthers. The drizzle turns to rain. #naturepoetry #ukcanals #morning #DailyNature

Catch up with 🌊📘Water Book Club w/ Lottie Begg of Isle of WIghts independent @lemonjellypress.bsky.social We discuss the anthology 'By Morning, The Sea Had Taken It' - how to submit, writing water, poetic form and diversity in writing tinyurl.com/LJPWaterBC #NatureWriting #BookClub #Water

Putting together a small chapbook of my poetry work from recent years, placing that loose thread between different poems feels likes writing another poem. Any advice is most welcome please My poem shortlisted for Working Class Nature Prize 2023. #NatureWriting #Poetry tinyurl.com/VanityCorners

Step Up. Fallback. Labour. Rest. Repeat. … clear autumn morning before rain, pink footed geese skeins pass over, compass set to east. Recalling Karine Polwarts sky bourne socialists (from Pockets of Wind Resistance) 12/08 #DailyNature #NatureWriting 🌱

"It's just a sunset" Yet here I am thinking about it 9 months later. Panoramic bliss If you like sunsets you may also like this article I wrote: tinyurl.com/SunsetOde #Autumn #NaturePhotography #SkyScape

An Ode to the Nature of Sunset - Martians, bears, Aztecs and the falling in love during the weekly shop. Read this if you need: - Dinner party factoids - Paint colour ideas - To find your nature creative community 💚 tinyurl.com/SunsetOde #NatureWriting #DailyNature #Sunset #Science #History

Today's creative nature prompt is: enchantment What will wake you from the dead, spins you to another universe, or tithes you to a fixed spot in time forever? Reply below or use #DailyNature to respond #JournalPrompt #NatureWriting

It is the most wonderful thing to open this app and find people following the creative prompts I hope would inspire them, even better when they are littered with beautiful birds as is here 💙

Letter to a Fox #DailyNature #NatureWriting #JournalPrompt

The sun being as dramatic as any teenager over Port Meadow this morning. #DailyNature

I'm currently writing up this week's #DailyNature roundup, every week I choose some reflections on nature to go with what's been sent in. I chose my own prompt to make a little ode to something this week. Tangents of tangents of tangents have been born I hope you enjoy sunsets 🌇 #NatureWriting

Some really supportive suggestions in this list. Grief is different for everyone, but there is probably something for everyone here

Every morning at this early hour (only a little after four thirty am), I see Fox trotting down the street, going about their lawful occasions, while I am watching from my window, always thrilled by a sight that's sweet. #DailyNature #NatureWriting

Beside tangled brambles, an unexpected whisper of excitement or is it exhilaration. It burrows, unnamed, between my shoulders. Hearing has been bad these past few days, so birdsong is muted. Hips and haws are deep crimson. Archangel. Drizzle. Two ducks. Home. #DailyNature

Have you had a really odd interaction when talking to a human at a company recently? I was starting to wonder if it was a trend of odd rudeness - then it hit me: it's AI. People are prompting AI to respond to people & argue in their favour. The pattern response is illogic & illiteracy...

Did you know mushrooms 'talk' to one another? Some can recognise up to 50 'words' - though they use pulses rather than tongues. Today's Creative writing prompt on Substack is: if you could talk to your local mushrooms, what would you tell them? 🍄 #DailyNature #NatureWriting #FunkyFungi

You're an NHS GP A patient comes in: she's having cyclic paralysis due to her chronic illness... You tell her you can't see beyond 3 years of her medical history, So her chronic diagnosis... (the one that took 16 years + the nhs offered organ removal for) doesn't exist. And how was your day?

Today is the second installment of Boater's Country Diary and I'm delighted that corporate turned Soulfarer Alexandre has supplied us with a tale of foraging off the Scottish coast substack.com/@jenratcliff... #NatureWriting #Forage #Ocean #UKBoaters

Reposting as it's an important message from Mary Oliver

Trees. dancing

Variegated grey clouds sail above the flowerless mead, & the wind kisses colder than of late. Every other step through dew-weighted grass causes craneflies to take flight & scatter low. From a backwater willow, a light burst of chiffchaff song evokes spring, while autumn romances the heart.

Saw this guy on the woods today and wondering if anyone knows their identity? #DailyNature #FungiFriends

A prompt for the birders #DailyNature

Misunderstood Nature - on talking monkeys, badgers and the complexity of peace... Listen or read online now Also, some submissions from the #DailyNature call this week #NatureWriting #Nature #Rewilding #Peace #Environment jenratcliffe.substack.com/p/misunderst...

Yesterday was World Mental Health Day, which was the theme of the #DailyNature creative prompt. I'm sorry for the delay, but I was wrestling with my internet like mad and wanted to go explore the forest. So, here it is anyway - How is everyone? #MentalHealth #Nature #NatureWriting

A throwback bit of Canal spookiness as we get closer to the spooky season! jenratcliffe.substack.com/p/old-neds-d... #UKCanals #Spooky #MonkeyMen #Shropshire

Sorry this is a little late but if the clouds aren't covering your world perhaps it's perfectly timed? Today's #DailyNature Writing Prompt

I'm not jealous, your jealous, but seriously how can I get my own fox fren?

20 years ago today was my first day at the @nhm-london.bsky.social. It’s been packed with learning, travelling, listening, curating, researching and shouting about the wonder of flies & the collection Thanks to everyone who made my double-decades amazing 🤘🪰🦟🤓

Do chains come in glass? Brown aspec water wobbles. Leaves curly in chrysalis: peridot swept to cherry, Blue bullet blows jiggling canal. I let glass wilt rectangular, black, empty without attention. Kingfisher glides back over khaki reflected lush phone click: screen off #DailyNature #MobilePhone

Have you ever wondered how Heron feel, as they float away from their body? Is it like a continuous out-of-body experience? #HeronMindfulness 💭

Online nature writing workshop is just £1 focusing on hybrid-haiku Haiku gives us form and focus on nature, its hybrid sibling gives us movement, freedom and the human. Join me online on 20th October 7pm [BST] / 11am [PST] tinyurl.com/HTHybridHaiku #NatureWriting #WritingWorkshop #Poetry

Today's prompt is inspired by the Draconid Meteor shower that should hopefully be seen over the next few nights, cloud willing Write about something in nature dismantled: Peel a (non-toxic) mushroom and observe its wavy layers? Get your microscopes out? #DailyNature #NatureWriting #WritingPrompt

Thank you to everyone posting about Brian & Wendy Froud's new book, containing 72 new paintings with literary responses by 37 women writers of diverse backgrounds, landscapes & mythic traditions. Having worked on the project for the last two years, we've all been moved by the enthusiastic response.

What do you see? You, who are gazing Into the water so earnestly? Do you see the summer skies Of your youth, when life was green And the air sweet with your scent? For meeting you now That is what I see too; The summer you still Bring into my autumn. #DailyNature #ukcanals #poetry #autumn #time

Tiny wings in drizzling rain. A moorhen pushes herself Away from the bank with a flash Of white petticoat. A golden star on a red bottle top Stamped into the towpath. The canal moves to a wind That I cannot feel. #DailyNature #ukcanals #naturepoetry

#DailyNature Do seeds let go? Do they clutch their mothers fearing the fall of independence Do they jump? Lusting for soil act of propitiation madness in their roots Do they embrace fates ghost? Salmon of the air spinning their tails with visions of spring, determined towards hope.

Today's writing prompt is inspired by the anniversary of the International Space Treaty Write a treaty for nature What can we do together? #DailyNature #NatureWriting

Today's prompt is in honour of Brocctober 🧡 Considering the misunderstood in nature 🦡 #DailyNature #NatureWriting #JournalPrompt

I recently pointed out some issues in a new gendered zone of a gym including funnel necked / no safety exits... The response was it was not 'ladies' but 'womens' only... Well colour me scum and send me on my way 😂 Clear exit lines & fire safety is not for working class women! #funny #feminism

The cloths of wet fires litter the ground #DailyNature #NatureWriting #Poetry #NaturePoetry