A hardy reader of the magazine scuba diving off Slyne Head in the cold March seas has just tweeted the two images reproduced here, top and bottom. We are pleased to re-tweet and hope you will all follow suit. A free copy of Archipelago 10 to Gráinne Ni Cormac of Westport when the time comes.
And for once we know not only the time but mirabile dictu also the place. Please enter this in your old-fashioned diaries or, if you think they have a future, your digital devices. In association with Somerville College, Oxford, and the Atlantic Archipelagos Research Consortium, we are holding a day of talks and an evening of readings and musical performances to mark our seamark tenth issue on Saturday 14 November 2015. ALL WELCOME. Archipelago 10 will be published that day.
The day’s proceedings will conclude with a showing of Robert Flaherty’s ‘Man of Aran’ movie introduced by Tim Robinson. As plans stand, there will be keynote talks in the morning by Norman Ackroyd (including extracts from the television documentary ‘What do artists do all day?’) and Robert Macfarlane.
We’ll update you as the programme and attendance details take more precise shape. But rest assured the event will take place. In the afternoon there will be two panels of talks and the rubrics for these will be defined by compass point: Southwest, Northeast, West and so on.
Already aboard for issue 10: Norman Ackroyd, Mark Cocker, Tim Dee, John Fanshawe, James Macdonald Lockhart, Robert Macfarlane, Bernard O’Donoghue, Angharad Price, Tim Robinson, Padraig Rooney, Mary Wellesley, David Wheatley. Please help keep us afloat by visiting the shop and ordering in advance of publication. As ever we will mail as soon as we have copies, first come first served. Back number are available for all issues, except 8, and only in a few copies in some instances, including the reprint of issue 1. So don’t put off to tomorrow what you ought to do today. The sales are what makes the difference. For us, it’s all about:
Making Ends Meet
Since you ask, I think of a door into the light,
Light enough to make me blink and rub
The sleep from my eyes. Limestone light
Backlit by sea. Light like a shadow
Falling outside-in, on a stone floor.
And a kettle rattling to life loud as shingle,
Its breath billowing like my own
As I lean there in the jamb, sipping hot tea,
Contemplating, savouring sea-light.
The tide out below. And the early worm
Already turning in a bird’s gut
Like the one thought in my head
Of lines to set and bait to put
Some poem on my plate by evening.
Do I miss it? Not for a minute.
I have the best of it wherever I go
And the rest of it is everywhere still
Struggling to make ends meet.
Warm congratulations to Robert Macfarlane on the publication of his new book Landmarks.
15th March 2015