Blue Space

Continuing our theme of environmental audio and aptly timed as we embark on the year ahead, Harry Ovington brings his academic research together with his field recording and compositions in his finale to a year long exploration of Blue Spaces.  We think about nature prescriptions and the health and wellbeing benefits of being out in

Ovule Obsession, Or: A Life without Ash – Jim Pratt

In this special guest blog piece, forester and pathologist Jim Pratt describes his growing obsession with, and love for, the Ash tree, along with his concerns about the causes and implications of Ash Dieback disease. What started as a mild feeling of guilt ended up in a journey that took 6000years to complete. Let me

Pen and Plough Writing Workshops Exhibition

Originally posted on The Pen and the Plough:
William Robb, Bathgate Ploughing Match, 1914. Photo from the collection of Kirsty Tait, used with permission. Introduction by Patrick Laurie and Emily Diamand Nature writing has discovered a new level of popularity. Fresh and varied voices have allowed readers to connect with the natural world, and the…

An Inescapable Wildness – Philip Strange

Sometimes it seems as though the seals are singing and in the wind that day their mournful song rose and fell adding to its mystery.  Some say it sounds like a human crying which is why it unsettles but to me it is a unique, other worldly noise, one that I have only heard from seals.

Jewish landscape writers and painters of the Russian fin de siècle

He wished ‘to locate in my country the most simple, the most intimate, the most commonplace and the most emotionally moving [landscapes], that which often causes a sense of melancholia. The spectators should be touched in the depths of their soul.’

Gifts of Gravity and Light: A Nature Almanac for the 21st Century – Pippa Marland

Pippa Marland, Land Lines team member and co-editor of the nature writing collection Gifts of Gravity and Light: A Nature Almanac for the 21st Century, reflects on how the collection came about. ‘I learned something new from each enjoyable essay and by the end realised that nature is integral to how we live on this planet, not a

Where is the Wild? Nature Writing Workshop with Amy-Jane Beer – by Joanna Dobson

Last year on our allotment we lost an entire crop of leeks to the allium leaf miner, Phytomyza gymnostoma. I went to the plot in driving rain on a grim December afternoon, and pulled up a few leeks for supper, their oniony tang hitting my nose in bursts as the wind whipped across my face.

Land Lines Blog Community Reviews: Favourite Nature Writing Texts of 2020

We are delighted to be able to share contributions from the Land Lines Blog community in this special post – which brings together our readers and contributors’ favourite nature writing texts that they encountered in 2020. A profoundly difficult year for many, 2020 has offered some of us a chance to reflect on what nature

Nick Hayes’ The Book of Trespass – Review by Rebecca Ferrier

This December on the Land Lines Blog, we are delighted to share with you a miniseries of reviews of key contemporary nature writing texts – including creative nonfiction and poetry – contributed by some wonderful writers and academics. Keep a look out for more instalments of the series over the next few weeks! “There are boundaries in

Seán Hewitt’s Tongues of Fire – Review by Pauline Rowe

This December on the Land Lines Blog, we are delighted to share with you a miniseries of reviews of key contemporary nature writing texts – including creative nonfiction and poetry – contributed by some wonderful writers and academics. Keep a look out for more instalments of the series over the next few weeks! ‘the living thing/pulled from