As we near the end of our residencies, it gives us great pleasure to share with you an event planned to mark the occasion.
Thursday 28 October, 6.30-8.00pm, there will be a live reading/ presentation/conversation about our time in residence on Zoom.
We made sure we stayed safe during our time working with our respective partners, and that’s not going to change at the end.
Come along to a virtual evening of words and voices and shares as we explore the highs and lows of our experiences of being Black and Brown and People of Colour in and writing about nature.
After this live virtual event, an online exhibition will go live on this website, showcasing our visual creations in residence.
And keep checking back, as come the end of November, the Black Nature in Residence Zine will be launched here too, presenting our creations.
This week saw me finally meeting Patrick Norris from Footsteps in Northumberland to walk across the Pilgrim’s Way, a pathway that only becomes available when the tide is out, to reach Holy Island. This is a nature reserve rich in resources for rare and special wildlife. It was such an amazing walk, as we set off at 5.30 across to the island. getting over there, in the rain and wind at times, we were getting by the howlings from a gathering go grey seals hauled out onto the sand flats. They were grey, but also mottled white, and black and brown, and had such a way of moving across the sand. Patrick called it ‘garlumphing’. And to hear them sing. Their haunting cries carried to us within the wind, in harmony with the wind. It was like the sound when there’s a window left ajar and the wind comes inside. Like a draught coming inside. After a picnic on the island, for the way back, we saw the setting sun. It was all about the light.
Just as we stepped off the causeway, as dusk was starting to settle in for the night, out from the long grass, flying low across the tarmac to the banks of seaweed on the other side, was a beige-tawny, wide wing span of the curlew. The curlew, featured within the Northumberland National Park’s logo; this was my first sighting of the bird. It was a wonderful way to end the evening with it’s evocative ‘curlee-curlee’ call sending us off home.