The Halt

"As I approach the blocking stones I realise that the barrow is, for me, a sacred place, because the memory of childhood is a sacred place. And part of it is preserved here." Seventy miles, thirty-five hours, four counties, two long barrows. longbarrowpress.substack.com/p/slow-netwo...

The Perseid meteor shower is set to peak tonight, in the small hours, on the other side of the solar eclipse, the culmination of several weeks of activity, with a few more weeks to come. It's not so much an event as a process. Here's a piece written in the wake of the 2021 shower.

Four walks in four seasons: south to north, west to east, east to west, north to south. Of time and the Dutch River. 1: longbarrowpress.substack.com/p/dutch-river 2: longbarrowpress.substack.com/p/unrecovere... 3: longbarrowpress.substack.com/p/point-zero 4: longbarrowpress.substack.com/p/to-scale

Many thanks to everyone who's shared and followed this (unusually slow) walk-in-progress over the past two weeks. The full thread (122 posts) is below.

A walk from York to Goole, via the River Ouse, Bishopthorpe, the Trans Pennine Trail, Selby and Boothferry, 9am to 9.30pm Thursday 2 April 2026. An improvised, illustrated thread of indeterminate length, part reflection, part reconstruction. 1/

When I lost interest in narrative, I lost the stories of my own life, I couldn’t fill the holes in the plot. I started to tell the stories again, piecing them together from what others had told me, their remembering was my remembering. The telling is all. longbarrowpress.substack.com/p/heart-of-t...

'A city caught in the act of disappearing.' Available now: the second part of my conversation with @cwjoneschris.bsky.social for The Two-Way Poetry Podcast, in which he and I discuss his sequence 'Little Piece of Harm' (and other Longbarrow titles). twowaypoetry.podbean.com/e/part-two-o...

Just released - the 2nd episode of my interview with @thehalt.bsky.social for The Two-Way Poetry Podcast on his memoir Last Collection and my book Little Piece of Harm. @petegreensolo.com @drjomaher.bsky.social @longbarrowpress.bsky.social @emmabolland.bsky.social www.podbean.com/eas/pb-vgna2...

'My mother grew sunflowers. I’d look out of the window and see them standing up straight against the back fence. She was always planting ahead of time. I understood, at last, what it meant, in the year of her death, to see the garden through its seasons.' longbarrowpress.substack.com/p/unrecovere...

'A day’s work. What is there to show for it. Think of storage. Think of distribution. In every corner. In every direction. Work going on. As far as the eye can see. Work going on. When you’re not looking.' 'Unrecovered Time': a walk from Leeds to Goole longbarrowpress.substack.com/p/unrecovere...

'My sleep has been bad since Sunday, slow to come, then broken, and the day starts with something missing. Lorry, van, flatbed truck.' 'Unrecovered Time': an account of a day's walk from Leeds to Goole (lightly revised from the recent Bluesky thread) longbarrowpress.substack.com/p/unrecovere...

No cross, no colour. The fields marked and abandoned by flag and flower.

A few poems re-presented as part of the Colour in Conversation residency / research project led by artists and writers Stu Burke, Gary Simmonds, and @emmabolland.bsky.social in Sheffield last week.

This Saturday, 2pm. I'm reading alongside @thehalt.bsky.social @rachelartsmith.bsky.social and Conor Rodgers as part of the Checked Out exhibition events programme. #Sheffield #poetry #prose #performance.

"At Bamforth Street tram stop the grass is banked with daffodil clumps and clouds of white blossom drift down from the crescents. My head is full of microns and kerning, little pencilled notes left over from the new book, 21mm margins, 13.9pt leading over 10.5pt text." 'Local Distribution'

"After my grandfather died, my mother discovered a cache of greetings cards in his desk drawer, birthdays and anniversaries, all of them stamped, unaddressed, unwritten. Occasions yet to come. This is what he remembered in a year of oesophageal cancer." 'Local Distribution'

"The mailer had made three or four tours of the postal network. I tried to work out the stages, the full itinerary, from the layers of handwritten and printed shipping labels and postage labels, I could only be certain of where it had ended up, the last known address." 'Local Distribution'

"To see the deciduous street tree, to see it from your window, always coming into leaf, even when it is not leafing, even when the leaves have gone, the idea of it and the eventual return, and then, one day, not to be there to see it, not to be there at all." 'Local Distribution'

"The gradient drops out and the houses on my left sink below the boundary walls and I decide that street trees are public amenities. Handmade posters in the upstairs windows, even now, are they fresh or just clinging to the light, a burst of yellow at the end of the road." 'Local Distribution'

"If blanks in the front matter are the book drawing breath then blanks in the end matter are the book exhaling. I often leave the last two pages blank for this reason. A blind folio need not be blank at all. It can be any page without a printed number." 'Local Distribution'

"The unwritten history of one borrowed book, a life out on loan, passing through other lives, across the city, beyond the city, wherever it is needed, no shelfmark, no bookplate, no due date. Slow distribution. Person to person. The map, or maps, that could show it all." 'Local Distribution'

"I think of the decisions forced by indecision, when it seemed that there were no good or right decisions, pick one, not that one, pick another, quick, the moment is passing. The moment passes and the decision is made or unmade and the future happens anyway. " 'Local Distribution'

"A bookmaker didn't make books, or lend them, or sell them, there were almost no books in the bookies. There was one book and it was kept behind the counter. It started off blank, pages of prophecies that would be proved true or untrue, the book of books had to balance." 'Local Distribution'

"In later years, when I was lost, or troubled, I would find my way back to the encyclopaedia, any volume, any page, everything you wanted to know. Entries that refer you to other entries. Subsections and colour-coded maps. It was organised and random. An index of solace." 'Local Distribution'

"I forget that my father was colour blind. It was explained to me as a child, I tried to imagine what it would be like to name a world without greens or reds, a uniform, for example, or a post box, but all I could see were pencilled greys where the colours should have been." 'Local Distribution'

The books go to their readers, one by one, at times quickly, at times slowly, halfway around the world or halfway across the city. There is no supply chain, not as such, only the postal network, irregular events, direct sales to bookshops, local distribution. longbarrowpress.substack.com/p/inventory

"The card is for my mother. I will post it to her tomorrow. I don’t know when Easter cards became part of our lives. The card is left blank for the message and the message is the handwriting, nothing more." longbarrowblog.wordpress.com/2021/12/23/l...

'We can dream a future, we can turn to the past, we can be anywhere but the present.' A month of Lockdown Walks, walked and written up over 30 consecutive days, 24 March – 22 April 2020. longbarrowblog.wordpress.com?s=lockdown+w...

'We can dream a future, we can turn to the past, we can be anywhere but the present.' A month of Lockdown Walks, walked and written up over 30 consecutive days, 24 March – 22 April 2020. longbarrowblog.wordpress.com?s=lockdown+w...

'To speak of class, if we speak of it, is to qualify it, at times defensively, at others apologetically, because class is never as simple as class. You can't think with it for long before it starts to slip. You can't confer it on yourself. You can't confer it on others.' ('Local Distribution')

'The books of the Merit Students Encyclopedia were uniform in size. The volumes were divided by words, not letters, and the words were printed on the spine. BAT CAIRO. CLOISTER DIGITALIS. MASS MUSES. When I was old enough to open the books I reached for REVERE SHINTO.'

'The books of the Merit Students Encyclopedia were uniform in size. The volumes were divided by words, not letters, and the words were printed on the spine. BAT CAIRO. CLOISTER DIGITALIS. MASS MUSES. When I was old enough to open the books I reached for REVERE SHINTO.'

October, a sleep of communes, the dawn set back. A federation of stars, undivided, still fixed in fields of Breton black.

On the hill, one note, one bell, night rolling over. Sea level. Blue shift. One colour lifts another until the province is lit.

"A red admiral, the only colour on the bridleway, the only colour in my mind. To step out of your own path, for a moment, to see yourself as a point on a line." Longbarrow 2024 highlights #2: Slow Networks. 70 miles, 35 hours, 4 counties, 2 long barrows. longbarrowpress.substack.com/p/slow-netwo...

Auerbach paintings always felt much more 'urgent' to me than Freud's. Work that needed to be done. Heresy, obvs, but there we are. The piece below is great, btw.

"I'm walking this route to piece together a landscape that I've known since childhood, intimately, discretely, fragmentarily." "Slow Networks": seventy miles, thirty-five hours, four counties, two long barrows. longbarrowpress.substack.com/p/slow-netwo...

An attempt at a 'cartographic ekphrasis' of Frank Auerbach's 'Maples Demolition, Euston Road', written and presented in July 2018, and shared in the wake of the painter's death. longbarrowpress.substack.com/p/maples-dem...

"To ‘make something of yourself’ was not to elevate yourself above others, but to make yourself useful, to do your best, with the resources at hand." 'Self-build' (March 2016) longbarrowblog.wordpress.com/2016/02/29/s...

"A pylon was a unit of length. It was a means of calculating distance and time. The legs of the towers were callipers that pivoted through the landscape." 'Landscapes of Power': a conversation between photographer Martyn J Bull and Brian Lewis. longbarrowpress.substack.com/p/landscapes...

Big recommend. Auerbach's work will endure.

An attempt at a 'cartographic ekphrasis' of Frank Auerbach's 'Maples Demolition, Euston Road', written and presented in July 2018, and shared in the wake of the painter's death. longbarrowpress.substack.com/p/maples-dem...

Preparing to read from 'Local Distribution' in The Green Room, Conway Hall, at @smallpublishers.bsky.social on Friday. Thanks to everyone who attended the reading (and to Molly for the photo).

As part of @smallpublishers.bsky.social 2024, and in a late change to the advertised programme, I'll be reading in The Green Room (at the rear of the Conway Hall) at 3.30pm on Friday. Full listings for the Fair's readings and talks on Friday and Saturday: smallpublishersfair.co.uk/readings-2024/

Cloud on the causeway, a passing shade. It passes. Noon. Nowhere to hide. No hedge, no tree. Nothing stands from here to the horizon. (0/68, 'White Thorns', one of several poems cut from the published sequence, 2017)

I can’t reconcile the turf and the turbary. Recycle. Respire. The mire is empty. A sponge drying out in wind and sun. (68/68, 'White Thorns', 2017)

Scar and start over, a hard terrace, solar racks, banked and modular. Fixed cells, no ground personnel, shadows of the shadow park. (67/68, 'White Thorns', 2017)

The shafts sealed, no word of where the colliery stood, no intercession. Buckled steel, then fault and flood, the strata out of sequence. (66/68, 'White Thorns', 2017)

The paths fall apart on the Humberhead Peatlands and the firelight sinks. All we could save, buried heat and blankets, a blind surface. (65/68, 'White Thorns', 2017)

Forcing the slices and spoils, dividing the shires, the sponge and topsoil. A moor without a shelter, a forest without a floor. (64/68, 'White Thorns', 2017)