The Clearing - a journal of nature, landscape and place.

Loading posts...

Walking the Landscape of HS2 – Jos Smith
In the summer of 2013 Jos Smith set out to walk the length of the first section of the proposed route of HS2 from London to Birmingham. Along the way he visited,…
February 14, 2014
Essay, The Clearing
Philip Gross – Two Snow Poems
Philip Gross is an award-winning poet, novelist and a teacher of creative writing. In 2009 his collection The Water Table won the T.S. Eliot Prize for poetry. ‘Snow the Cartographer’ appears…
February 6, 2014
Poetry, The Clearing
Alan M. Kent and M.J. Forster
CONVERSATIONS WITH A BRETON WOODSMAN Sawdust sticks to the sweat on his philtrum, this moist August, here in Melioneg, where his bark-born hands guide timber from the woods at Ar…
January 30, 2014
Poetry, The Clearing
David Troupes – from ‘God of Corn’
These poems are from a developing sequence titled God of Corn. Each poem begins with a line or passage from J G Holland’s 1865 multi-volume book A History of Western Massachusetts. The project…
January 17, 2014
Poetry, The Clearing
Tim Dee – ‘Vinegar, Sawing, Smoking’
(This essay begins with two paragraphs that were published in Four Fields.) In the autumn of 1986, four months after the disaster at Chernobyl, I moved to Budapest to study…
January 10, 2014
Essay, The Clearing
Nathan Thompson – from ‘Signs’
Near Exeter Prison, on Blackall Road, there’s an old metal plaque on a wall that reads: I don’t like text in art but walking along this road holding the hand of…
January 3, 2014
Poetry, The Clearing
Philip Dunshea – Marchlands
I’m going for a walk in the Marchlands. This is where England and Wales are supposed to meet, but it’s always been a bit less precise than that. The line on the…
December 13, 2013
Essay, The Clearing
Sarianne Durie – Landscapes
THE ICE BOOK OF CHINA after Xu Bing Bees rise from fragrant grasses Patterns repeat on terraced ground lines repeat lines echo lines Character of tree…
December 6, 2013
Poetry, The Clearing
Paul Kingsnorth – The Bay
This week Paul Kingsnorth offers us a very modern vision of Morecambe Bay. Paul is a writer who lives in Ulverston, Cumbria. Among other books, he is the author of Real England, a…
November 29, 2013
Essay, The Clearing
Matthew Griffiths and Sarah Taylor Silverwood
THE NEW BUILDING The new building first made itself noticed that evening as some of the others shuffled aside like commuters, not quite making room for one more person. …
November 22, 2013
Poetry, The Clearing
Sophy Rickett – Objects in the Field
How do we look at the world before us? What is the quality of attention we bring to our environment, and what do we do with what we see? These are…
November 15, 2013
Essay, The Clearing
David Hart – New Poems
The Clearing is very pleased to present four new poems by David Hart. David grew up in rural Wales but has spent most of his life living in Birmingham where he…
November 7, 2013
Poetry, The Clearing