Last night saw the first severe frost of the winter. When I looked out this morning the conservatory roof was like frosted glass – inscribed with plumes of thickly ribbed feathers – the patterns were quite extraordinary. The car needed scraping, even though it was nearly midday before I left to meet friends in the cafe at the Botanic Gardens in Durham. The gardens were mostly deserted, (I really like them better empty) the cafe less so.
As I’ve said before the gardens are a place in which I often find inspiration.
When I first began writing it was place that fascinated me and often provided my starting point, and I find I return again and again to the relationship we have with our landscape. This week in my newsletter I will be talking about creating a sense of place in our writing, as well as giving details of some new competition opportunities. If you’d like to receive my newsletter which is free simply fill in the form on the right.
‘The first maps were songs, and in this respect a landscape is language. Words shape landscapes into portable, memorizable journeys, and in turn landscape shapes language into tongue, dialect, idiolect. Just as each place is voiced, so it gives voice.’
Graham Mort
Lovely post. You see beauty everywhere. I have copied the quotation because just now – obsessed with maps as I am – it has great resonance with me. Thank you. Wx
There is, I feel, something deeply human and beautiful in the relationship between landscape and language. How they inform and are informed by each other. Languages that evolved across the Mediterranean during the medieval diaspora show this so clearly. But also with writing, it falls short I feel. Times when I’ve expressed a landscape in words as well as I might, and in doing so felt that the words excluded so much of myself. And there it sits, this piece of work, perhaps even beautiful in its own right, but also something of a solipsistic stranger to me.
Yes, so resonant for me too Wendy, and as you say Warren something beautiful and vital in the relationship between landscape and language.
Ax
no buts Honey