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    • THE CLEARING
        • the clearing

          An online journal published by Little Toller Books that offers writers and artists a dedicated space in which to explore and celebrate the landscapes we live in. Our contributors are encouraged to go forth and find distinctive visions that startle us, rural or urban, modern or prehistoric, industrial, post-industrial, fantastical, natural, political, however they come. But each must be meaningful, surprising, felt.
        • READ THE CLEARING
        • Submissions & Mentoring

        • Murujuga by Sally McEnallayOur history hides underneath, requiring forensic and patient excavation sometimes with tweezers and small brushes.
        • Harry and Pierse by Hana LoftusWhat drew Becker to crouch in the fields day after day, obsessively documenting his neighbours as they worked?
        • Montol and Midwinter Light by Ysella SimsWe wind through the streets, the rain giving way to the winds of the next winter storm.
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    • GRIEF, PLACE, LANDSCAPE – She Exhales by Maxim Peter Griffin

      you could buy a bungalow under the sea wall for buttons – she used to bring the kids here – they used to go up Jackson’s and pour coppers in the slots

      June 1, 2021
      Essay, illustration, The Clearing
    • Excerpt from The Open Places by Dominic Cooper

      The idea of the Old Wood never quite lets go.  Its shadow is always there, pressing imperceptibly at the margins of what is light and conscious in us.

      May 4, 2021
      Essay, The Clearing
    • Set in Stone by Sophie Pierce

      This place feels like a receptacle of memory. A sanctum. I think it’s why these sites draw me, and why I need to make regular pilgrimages to them.

      April 6, 2021
      Essay, The Clearing
    • Bone Light by Suzanne Joinson

      The next day is grey and gloomy, the mist low. I pause. Should I walk amongst the sad trees and down the empty lane?

      March 29, 2021
      Essay, The Clearing
    • One Blue Moment by Simon Smith

      Kingfisher is what my brain shouted out to me as it sprinted to catch up. In fact, the first blurred, melded notion that actually occurred to me was Kingfisherflash.

      March 23, 2021
      Essay, The Clearing
    • The Wild Nearby by Julian Hoffman

      What made them important to me was the sense that they could heal over you, like sap hardening across the wound in a tree.

      March 1, 2021
      Essay, The Clearing
    • The White in the Woods by Richard Hibbert

      From stubby twigs or chunks of wood, ones that were especially replete with water, come the most spectacular flowers of frost.

      February 24, 2021
      Essay, The Clearing
    • Ice Works by Martin Hesp

      Snow meant: you do what you want, while nothing else moves and nothing else is happening. This is your white world.

      February 1, 2021
      Essay, The Clearing
    • On Entering the Wrong Carriage by Rachel J Fenton

      Only I am taking things slow, of course; nature is busy. The pear tree that two weeks ago resembled me bowed by the weekly grocery shop now has its branches empty.

      January 26, 2021
      Essay, The Clearing
    • Birds of Firle by Tanya Shadrick

      Twenty-one rooks printed and stuck into that fifty-pence notebook. To be offered in turn to anyone, anywhere, who would write back with their thoughts.

      December 30, 2020
      Essay, The Clearing
    • Placing the Mark, Marking the Place by B. G. Nichols

      Over time, I began to transfer my little votives from one place to another, creating invisible filaments, lines of organic energy that connected me to a place.

      December 7, 2020
      Essay, The Clearing
    • Walking boots and binoculars by George Hassall

      These moors are Britain’s wet deserts, drowned by rain pretty much every day and howled by the winds.

      November 25, 2020
      Essay, The Clearing
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    About

    THE CLEARING is an online journal published by Little Toller Books that offers writers and artists a dedicated space in which to explore and celebrate the landscapes we live in. Our contributors are encouraged to go forth and find distinctive visions that startle us, rural or urban, modern or prehistoric, industrial, post-industrial, fantastical, natural, political, however they come. But each must be meaningful, surprising, felt.



    Submissions

    The editors welcome original submissions in written, audio and visual genres. Submission should reflect The Clearing/Little Toller’s concern with the natural environment, but within this broad subject-matter we encourage a diversity of interpretation and approach.

    If you’d like to submit work to The Clearing, please email theclearing@littletoller.co.uk. Please refer to the submission guidelines. While we receive many submissions we will get back to you as soon as we are able.

    Categories

    • Diary (33)
    • Essay (244)
    • Film (16)
    • illustration (11)
    • Interview (14)
    • Photography (4)
    • Podcast (6)
    • Poetry (124)
    • Reading (2)
    • Short Story (1)

    You May Also Like

    • Protected: Murujuga by Sally McEnallay
      There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
    • Harry and Pierse by Hana Loftus
      What drew Becker to crouch in the fields day after day, obsessively documenting his neighbours as they worked? […]
    • Montol and Midwinter Light by Ysella Sims
      We wind through the streets, the rain giving way to the winds of the next winter storm. […]

    Podcast

    • A walk along Chesil by Sarah Acton
    • I’m a bat, I’m totally a bat
    • Paul Kingsnorth in conversation with Charles Foster: a podcast

    From the Archive

    • A Chiffchaff Sings by Martin Maudsley
      And I thought to myself: He has seen nearly a …
    • The Weight of a Dog by Pippa Marland
      I’m here to collect the ashes of my dog Nina.
    • A Sense of Wonder by Philip Hoare
      'We no longer camp as for a night’, the American …
    . . .

    Whats in the name

    Tollern river valley in West Dorset. Recorded in the Domesday survey as Tolre, derived from a Celtic word for stream in a hollow valley.

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