Here, Under the Eaves

By Rebecca Smith:

Our house martins are back. They are rebuilding their nest, having already scraped last years’ mud and feathers away. Repairing and strengthening seems like good practise. I watch them as they swoop and tumble with complete control in the strip of sky between the houses. I live on a young street, only five years old. I count at least twenty houses, here from my front window. There is more brick than branch. More road than grass. But, I remind myself, the street is still in its infancy. We have a lot of growing to do.

I have planted a rowan tree and a red acer on the front lawn, a birch, an apple and a pear tree in the back garden. Every day, I study their progress, note the extra space they take up, expanding their green leaves. For so long nothing seemed to happen, but of course it did. Winter can feel like an age. 

There is no chorus in the morning here yet - the trees are too small, their branches too flimsy for the birds to settle on. I remember, last year, hearing the chirps of the newly hatched house martins in their nest under the eaves and how they chimed with the cooing of my own baby girl. The birds are back, the baby ones now fully grown, and my daughter is saying whole words. 

One day the trees will be big and if I stand here and look out of the window, I’ll see green. Not the rust coloured brick of the mirror image house opposite, or my neighbour silhouetted in the window as he walks from room to room. I look at the rowan tree and wonder what is happening beneath. What is it like down there this time of year? Is there a fuss, a rush, a ‘let’s get on with this’ kind of attitude? I hope we have not made it too hard for things to flourish up here. I plant more lavender and sow bean seeds.

The woods that line the edge of the estate are full of creatures. Woodpeckers skip round trunks of trees (my daughter shows her Dad at home, nod nod nodding her head). We find tadpoles that are high and dry, small clumps of them with only the smallest wiggle left in their tails. A robin, who I swear I knew in a previous life, follows our step through the trees. I want them to follow me home, like Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. A trail of birds, insects, mammals hoping and jumping up the curb.

Among the houses, nature knows there are different rules. Maybe the house martins are the pioneers. They are showing the rest that it is possible to make a home here. The trees are growing, I promise. I’ll plant more lavender for the bees and make beds for the snap dragons. I’ll leave a gap in the foot of the fence for the hedgehogs. It’s the least I can do.

***

Rebecca Smith is a writer, podcast maker and teacher based in central Scotland. Find out more on her website.

Sedgeland (rara avis in terris)

By Rebecca Dempsey: 

From a lookout above the marsh I had my Black Swan event. 
I was a child where life felt unchanging. 
It wasn’t the case. The wetland was seasonal, precarious, great birds pushed through phalaris. 
Amongst cutting grass and bulrushes, paired swans nested and fed. 
Random as dragonflies darting over the broken surface of brackish water, I was the outlier. 
Swamped in a sea of dead bracken, growth spirals stalled, perched upon a stranded dune and, undone by unknowing the why of me where everything had its place. 

Undirected, seated where an ancient ocean once lapped before withdrawing, nothing indicated my arrival to run grey grains of sand through my fingers, watching swamp harriers quartering the sky. 
White ibis, shelducks, the brolgas belonged, like the swans. 
Never inevitable, yet I was there with those fly ins, those long distance, faithful returnees from northern climes to the southern hemisphere.
However, I was wrong to believe we were similar: I was the rare bird. 
I was the one passing through. 

***

Rebecca Dempsey is a writer. She was born in Adelaide and grew up in rural South Australia. She lives in Melbourne, Victoria. Her poems, short stories and reviews have been published around the world in a variety of outlets. She can be found at WritingBec.com.

Delamere Forest Midwinter

By David Lewis:

When I was a child in 1970s Liverpool we sometimes bought our Christmas tree from Delamere Forest, a commercial woodland in Cheshire and the remnant of a vast medieval hunting forest, a place of dense woods, open water, fens and bogs.  

I was a bookish child.  My reading was enriched by my experiences of landscape and my awareness of landscape was informed by my reading.  Delamere took me to a European forest-land of giants and ogres and child-eating witches, and on the maps the darkness was visible – Black Lake, Hunger Hill, Dead Lake.  I did not feel that other people took a pleasure in these connections.  

The Delamere visit was a day for heavy coats and wellington boots, because the forest car park was a muddy field and the sales area was just a clearing in the trees, ringed by coloured lights.  The frozen ground had been trampled to icy mush, and pine branches had been laid down to make the paths safer.  Chalk-red and powder-green huts, decked with pine branches and fir cones, were built in the trees for Father Christmas and the sale of trees, hot food and drinks.  Chestnuts roasted on a brazier, slightly-burned-sausage smoke drifted through the trees.   Shivery elves took donations for local good causes, and the Salvation Army brass band played carols from a wooden stage.    

And yet the visit to the Forest was a very different Christmas activity from the school Nativity play or the carol service.  The felled trees were arranged in flopped, loose rows on the ground, rough finger-jabbing, resin-scented spikes, sharp, unfriendly, essentially defeated, and the heavy twinkle of gaudy lights moving in the thin wind was unable to hold back the Forest’s innate gloom.  I half-knew that there was nothing Christian about visiting Delamere at midwinter, that it was a cold pagan celebration of muddy folk tales and encroaching darkness.

Northern England in December is grey if rarely bitterly cold, but one year, in the countryside outside the city, about two centimetres of snow fell.  Drained of colour, the Cheshire hills and fields were sharpened to blacks and whites and snow-greys.  Once we had bought the tree we chose to go for a walk, away from the lights into the sighing trees and crisp wind.  Here the year was dying, silently and without warmth or light - the gloom of mid-afternoon was shadowing the dusk, and it would be dark early.  And I loved it.  I loved the sharp wind on my face, the snowy tree-fields receding into the early dusk.  I loved the silence after the brash tinny music, the grey light after the gaudy bulbs, loved the fact that nobody had walked the paths since the snow had fallen overnight.  

There are moments in childhood when we catch a glimpse of those things which will enrich our adult lives.  The forest paths were deserted on that late afternoon because most people take no pleasure in cold and snow and darkness, but for the first time I realised that I did not share this opinion.   And more importantly at that time I began to realise that I had every right to think differently, about this and about many other things.  I was right to love the cold, right to connect storytelling with landscape, right to love maps and place-names.  My feelings about the forest walk on that long-ago afternoon were a step to creative adulthood, and ultimately a step towards my shadow-life as a writer.  

***

David Lewis has written five books of history/landscape/psychogeography about his native Liverpool and Merseyside.  He posts urban/rural images on Instagram - davidlewis4168 and mutters about the world on Twitter - @dlewiswriter

Watch: Wanderlust and Memories of Elsewhere

In a discussion based a series of essays published on Elsewhere: A Journal of Place earlier this year, Sara Bellini, Anna Evans, Marcel Krueger and Paul Scraton talk about wanderlust and belonging, what it means to be home and what it means to be away, at the end of this strange and anxious year. Thanks so much to everyone who attended and took time out to spend a Monday evening with us. This was the first ever Elsewhere online event, and hopefully it won’t be the last… but equally, we hope to see some of you in person in 2021 too!

The essays:

Plateau of the Sun, by Sara Bellini

The Road to Skyllberg, by Anna Evans

La Fleur en Papier doré, by Marcel Kruger

The White Arch, by Paul Scraton

Podcast: Language Keepers

Marie’s Dictionary – Photo Emergence Magazine

By Sara Bellini

“I left my Indian language behind when my grandma died. So that was it. Since 1991 I’ve started remembering words: lake, ocean, sea... I wrote them down on pieces of paper [...] I would wake up [around] 1 o’clock and write down a word. I guess I dreamt about it or something, maybe my grandma was trying to tell me: remember, remember.” 

Marie Wilcox is 85 years old and she’s the last fluent speaker of Wukchumni, one of the Indigenous languages of North America. She gathered all the words she could remember and compiled the first and only Wukchumni dictionary, typing on a computer until late at night. Her daughter started helping her and picked up the language herself, taught it to her own daughter and grandson, and is now  teaching it to anyone interested in Indigenous cultures. The story of this family’s efforts to save their language from extinction, and that of three other Indigenous communities across California, is told in the mini-series Language Keepers.

In 2018/19 Emergence Magazine documented the process of revitalisation of the endangered Tolowa Dee-ni’, Karuk, Wukchumni, and Kawaiisu languages, which culminated in a multimedia story and film. This autumn they have released additional material in a six-episode podcast, to dig deeper into the reality of cultural extinction. Many languages solely exist in an oral tradition passed on from one generation to the next, which means that the only sources are the people who speak it, and in some cases, some notes written by foreign anthropologists. 

In terms of language loss, California is one of the most endangered places in the world: 200 years ago over 90 languages and 300 dialects were spoken, and today only half of them remain. This is the result of centuries of colonisation, Christianisation, forced assimilation, relocation, rape, enslavement, repression and genocide. The collective intergenerational trauma and the linguistic imperialism that allows participation in the political, economical and cultural life of a country only through a dominant language, are key factors that lead to language extinction. Language connects us to our ancestors, our traditions and the place we live in. Language loss is not just an individual identity crisis, it’s the loss of a worldview and the loss of diversity for society at large.  

Indigenous Languages in California – Image Emergence Magazine

Loren Bommelyn is the last fluent speaker of Tolowa Dee-ni’ and contributed to finalising the alphabet in 1997. He explains that, in his native language, to express where you are from you say that “you are actually from that ground. [...] There’s a bond to that place, almost as if you were a sibling, so everything in that environment becomes intimate to you: the shape of the bark of a tree, the way a tree forks [...] We’re all interconnected, we’re all interrelated, it’s all interlaced into one gigantic entity. [...] This understanding of the universe and how we relate to our universe is bound within your language. If you don’t learn your language you miss out on that understanding of how the world fits together.”

Indigenous languages foster a connection with the environment by expressing and shaping a mindset where humans are not separate from nature. By passing on traditional ecological knowledge, Indigenous people have been able to maintain and value a sustainable relationship with their ecosystems - a relationship endangered everywhere by urbanisation, industrialisation and capitalism. In a time of climate emergency and a related pandemic, this resonates more than ever. 

Language Keepers takes us on a linguistic journey that explores the legacy of colonialism within Indigenous communities in North America, and the complex and transformative dynamic of language revitalisation. It is a reminder of the multiplicity of identities and lack of equality in our multi-ethnic societies and, most of all, an invitation to heal.

You can listen to the Language Keepers Podcast on the Emergence Magazine website, and find out more about Indigenous languages in California.

Printed Matters: Fare

Photo: POST

By Sara Bellini

Sometime during the first lockdown, I found myself longingly holding a copy of a beautifully designed magazine called Fare that I had picked up because of the word ‘Glasgow’ in all caps on the cover. It was already clear to me at that time that my trips to the UK were cancelled for the immediate future and possibly indefinitely - so I started exploring momentarily inaccessible places through literature.

Reading Fare turned out to be an immersive experience where I would go back and forth from the page to my memory. The texture and complexity of the city were there: the sounds and smells as well as the visuals, and most importantly the taste. Glasgow is not an obvious place where to look for outstanding culinary experiences, and yet if you’re open to serendipity, you’ll find plenty of them.

Fare is a travel magazine focusing largely on food, one city at a time. It was founded three years ago by Ben Mervis - food writer and contributor to Netflix Chef’s Table - combining his degree in medieval history, his experience working at noma and his passion for writing. It would be more precise to state that the magazine is about the cultural scene of a specific place, as it doesn’t feature only tasty treats. But culture is an abstract and general term, while Fare looks at the particular with a meticulous and gentle eye.  

Beside Glasgow, Fare has been to Istanbul, Helsinki, Charleston (SC), Seoul and Tbilisi and the latest issue on Antwerp is just out now. The choice of location as well as the themes of the articles set the magazine apart from more mainstream publications, which tend to stick to big names and offer a polished and homogeneous image of a city. Rather than featuring well-known Michelin-star chefs, Fare looks for stories of ordinary people that have managed to create - inside or outside their kitchens - something valuable for the community around them. The way these stories are captured in full colour - through words, photography or illustrations - makes sure they can be enjoyed by readers that have never been to or will never visit the place they’re reading about.

Food is a vessel to pass on traditions and link generations across time and sometimes across space, like in the case of Punjabi immigrants in 2019 Scotland. It’s also the glue of community, especially in multi-ethnic and economically diverse cities. Food brings people together to share something that goes beyond your five-a-day and is rooted into collective memory. Food is about people and the relationships between them, as well as their relationship with the place(s) they call home. That’s why it’s important to tell these stories and we hope Fare will keep doing so for a long time.

Here is our chat with Ben Mervis:

Photo: POST

What have you learnt from Fare in the past three years?

I've learned so much: about Fare itself (what it is and isn't), and about creating a magazine. Most indie publishers like myself have little or no prior experience with magazine publishing before getting started. As a magazine, we've really found confidence in our voice and design in the last couple of issues. In some ways, I regret Fare not being a quarterly magazine, because each issue is a chance to improve on the last, to tweak things that went wrong and try out new ideas! I'd love to have more opportunities for doing that.

Could you talk a bit about the connection between food, history, community and culture at the heart of the magazine?

Yeah! So my background is in history--medieval history--however, I fell into the food world when I moved to Copenhagen several years ago. Traveling around the world with my then-boss, René Redzepi, I began to understand new cultures through their food: meeting cooks and craftsmen and hearing local histories tied to food production or technique or ingredients. It was incredibly fascinating. When I started Fare it was a very natural convergence of all of those things.

Why did you choose the print magazine as a format? 

To be honest I chose print before I knew or had decided anything about the magazine itself! This came as a love of print.

How do you pick a city and which aspects of its culinary scene to highlight?

City selection is about creating a balance within the 'series' and choosing cities that are different enough to make each issue feel wholly unique and its own.

What are the literary inspirations behind Fare?

One was Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. I love the idea that the same city could be described in a thousand different ways.

What are your plans for the next issue and how has Covid changed them? 

For the time being, Covid restricts our travel, so we're changing the structure of our magazine slightly to bring on a guest curator. They're an individual who intimately knows the featured city, and we collaborate with them on finding the right voices and themes for the issue. That's something you'll see for Issue 8 and Issue 9.

Is there anything I haven’t asked you that you’d like to share with our readers?

One thing we're really buoyed by is the fact that, in times like this, a desire to travel has not faded--even if the opportunities to do so have. We're really encouraged by the fact that so many people have written to us to say how Fare has helped them 'travel' in this time when armchair travel may be the closest they get to the real thing! 

Pick up a copy of Fare at Rosa Wolf in Berlin or at one of their many distributors across the UK and Europe. And if going into a shop is not a possibility, you can order it online.

The Path of Least Resistance

By Kenn Taylor:

– I never thought I’d live in the countryside.
– This isn’t the countryside, it’s the edge of a city.

In Yorkshire though, the rural and the urban have a more indistinct relationship than elsewhere. Something not always appreciated by those born there. For those of us who moved in though, the ability to walk in an hour from Bradford city centre to, yes, up on a wild and windy moor, is not taken for granted.

The place that meant most though, was the Leeds-Liverpool Canal. I’d known the same waterway at its other end too. Liverpool though, is a river city, dominated in every way by the huge estuary. The canal there is an afterthought, just another body of still water amongst the many docks.

In West Yorkshire though, the canal has a central function, having helped define the districts and towns that it passes through. The shape of the cities too. When I shifted once more in my life, this time from London to the outskirts of Bradford, the Leeds-Liverpool became, by accident, hugely important to me.

Another canal, the Regents, had played a significant role in my brief time living in London. The dense urbanity of East London was exhilarating. To the point when I sometimes had to grip to manage the intensity of feeling. Like it had been in Liverpool too at its absolute best, but that was a deeper, more personal feeling of shared experience, communal understanding and expression. In London, it was an external force and you knew you were just a tiny cog spinning in it, which had its own allure. The canal represented calm in London. A long straight place to head along without a particular purpose. Somewhere to burn off energy when collected fears and ghouls and ideas threatened to overwhelm.

Moving from Bethnal Green Road to Bradford district meant no longer trains to Liverpool Street thundering past the front of my flat, instead expansive fields and skies. The canal though was a rare constant and still a place for mental space. In London, this had meant a deep walk through every shade of urban life, in that city now mostly polished to within an inch of its life. In West Riding though, it was a walk through increasing ruralness, striding into ever wider, open spaces. All along the way, the black and white mile posts at various angles of lean, reminding me that my origins in Liverpool were just a, long, walk away.

Without needing a car, the canal was a place to head where tension could be felt lifting from the shoulders, often with every step. Where tasks, troubles and frustrations could be put aside to go deeper about ourselves and everything else. On the surface, a straight graded route next to the murky mirror shimmer of water which required no thought or strain to navigate. Really though it is a winding, up and down route through the path of least resistance. The idea of this once deeply capitalistic functional waterway, now vintage leisure route, as a way of working out a way through lives which had involved some wandering and some extremes, was not lost on us. The passage of time felt slowed and so better to consider it. 

It helped. Both of us. Not having to think about the direction helped us to figure out where we should be going. Sometimes, breathing in as we passed further out with nothing around but fields sweeping away in the distance into hills, that same exhilaration again. Where you almost need to grip something, but now, sucking in fresh air rather than the dense electric hum of the city.

There have been more moves since, but I find somehow the canal keeps coming back. A much needed place to pace along the path of least resistance and think about then, now, the future, nothing at all. 

***

Kenn Taylor is a writer and arts producer. He was born in Birkenhead and has lived and worked in Liverpool, London, Bradford, Hull and Leeds. His work has appeared in a range of outlets from The Guardian and CityMetric to The Crazy Oik and Liverpool University Press. www.kenn-taylor.com