Longbarrow Press

Phase Two of The Seven Wonders, an ongoing series of collaborative works based on  spectacular landmarks from the Derbyshire Peak District, begins with a reimagining of Kinder Downfall, in which Fay Musselwhite’s poem ‘Phlegmatic’ is paired with a new painting by Paul Evans. You can view the painting and the poem here. The site also features the work that comprised Phase One of the project: drawings and paintings by Paul Evans accompanied by poems by James Caruth, Matthew Clegg, Mark Goodwin, Rob Hindle and Chris Jones. A new painting and a new poem will be posted on The Seven Wonders site every month from June 2012.

Among the contributors to Phase Two of The Seven Wonders will be Alistair Noon, whose poem ‘Hill with Bunker and Flak Tower’ (from the recent Longbarrow Press pamphlet Swamp Area) introduces a fascinating piece by Luke Bennett on the fate of Berlin’s ‘heap-parks and zoo-arks’. The sequence from which the poem is taken (‘Six Structures’) profiles several of Berlin’s notable man-made features, including the sculpture by Jonathan Borofsky (installed on the River Spree) that gives its name to the poem ‘The Molecule Man’. Listen to Noon reading this poem here; for his reading of ‘Hill with Bunker and Flak Tower’, please click here.

Noon’s ‘Top Five Strange Poetry Readings’ is among the recent additions to our Longbarrow Blog; also featured is Matthew Clegg‘s appreciation of the work of poet Josephine Dickinson. Finally, Clegg and Fay Musselwhite will read a selection of walking-themed poems at 7 Garden Street, Sheffield on Saturday 23rd June as part of the Occursus/plastiCities summer programme (6pm prompt start; admission free; further details and directions here). Clegg will be reading from Edgelands, Nobody Sonnets and other sequences; click here to listen to excerpts from Edgelands and some brief comments on the art of walking.

As part of the Occursus summer programme, Matthew Clegg will lead a guided walk and poetry workshop designed to explore the roles of movement and trance in the composition of poetry. Moving with thought will take place in Sheffield on Saturday 23 June (12pm–4pm); admission is free, but places are strictly limited and booking is essential. Please note that this event is now fully booked. Matthew Clegg will also be giving a reading in Sheffield on 23 June (a one-off presentation of poems that engage with the experience of walking, including selections from Nobody Sonnets, Edgelands and his forthcoming collection The Power-line). Venue, start time and other details will be added to our Events page shortly.

Luke Bennett takes up the theme of walking in his fascinating blog, with a recent post in which he reflects on the mapping of the Sheffield ‘Blitzscape’ undertaken by Rob Hindle in his sequence ‘Dore Moor to the Marples Hotel’ (from the forthcoming Longbarrow Press anthology The Footing); a series of poems based on a walk (from Sheffield’s southwestern outskirts to its centre) which Hindle re-walked (with audience) on 12 December 2010 (the 70th anniversary of the Sheffield blitz). You can read Bennett’s commentary here. A fragment of location footage from the December 2010 walk (which prompted Bennett’s reflections) can be viewed here; the poem read by Hindle in the film (‘Ecclesall Woods’) appears in full here.

We’ve also created a new Longbarrow Podcasts page on SoundCloud (to showcase our longer sequences of location recordings); click here to listen to the ‘sound corridors’ made by Matthew Clegg, Andrew Hirst and Chris Jones during walks in and around Sheffield’s back streets and waterways in 2008 and 2009.