Geography Workshop Presents: Her Outdoors

This Thursday, 14th April, on the mighty Resonance FM, from 8-9pm:

Clear Spot

Geography Workshop Presents….Her Outdoors. Geography Workshop Presents questions assumptions about the ways in which our world is imagined. In this first programme, artists and writers Karen Lloyd, Alison Lloyd, Lucy Furlong and Morag Rose reflect on walking as practise, informed by the pejorative phrase ‘Er Indoors’. How does their work and the embodied practise of walking inform the way they narrate, enrich and question the narratives that dominate nature-writing, landscape and psycho-geography? Presented by Dr Jo Norcup. [Repeated Friday 9am.]

Thanks to Jo Norcup for inviting me to be involved. I had a great time meeting and talking with everyone, and felt inspired and fired-up afterwards.

I hope you enjoy listening in!

One Month Until the #Treeathlon Please donate!

In one month exactly I will be running 5km around Battersea Park to raise money for Trees For Cities. I now have a Just Giving page where you can contribute towards greening our cities. Please help!

Thank you
🙂

Running for Trees – WEEK ONE #Treeathlon

I’ve signed up for the Treeathlon being held in support of Trees for Cities in September in Battersea Park. Trees are the lungs of our cities, providing oxygen where it is most needed, and as a city dweller (well, suburbanite) with severe asthma, and a lover of trees and cities, how could I not sign up? Well, I could have easily not signed up but I am aware of encroaching middle age spread and the fact that after driving for three years I have never felt so stiff and unfit in my life. So the trees and cities win if I can raise some money, and I win by getting fitter.

Last night I ran/walked/ran/walked for half an hour and it felt great. Following a recommendation from a friend I am using the NHS’s fantastic podcast of their ‘Couch Potato to 5k’ programme. Download it for FREE (SAVE THE NHS!) and then listen to the podcast for each week which gives you clear instructions on exactly what to do.

I am officially considering this WEEK ONE as I have now started listening to the podcasts. I have already been running a couple of times and am trying to add in some cross training by swimming at least twice a wekk as well beacuse it is especially beneficial for your lungs if you happen to be asthmatic.

I’ve got two more runs to complete this week and am intending to update my progress weekly here.

#SilentSunday : Je Reviens Toujours!

Poems at Occupy St Paul’s

I went to Occupy St Paul’s a couple of weeks ago with some copies of my poetry map, Amniotic City, and the people in the Information Tent at the time were keen to have a couple of the poems as posters. So I went back this week and stuck up two poems, ‘Feed the Birds’ which is in the shape of the dome of St Paul’s, and ‘The Imposible Circle-Squared Mile’ which is a comment on the foundations of the Square Mile and its business practices. These were written before any of the Occupy protests began but address some of the same issues and were written about this very part of London, so it seems fitting to have them in that spot.

#WordlessWednesday : ShoeShine at St Mary-Le-Bow, the Shoemakers’ Church

Occupy Mother London

From Spring Equinox to Summer Solstice this year, I spent a significant amount of time exploring the small patch of the Square Mile encompassing Fleet Street, Ludgate Hill and Cheapside. Walking, taking photos, thinking and experiencing this, one of the most ancient and earliest settled parts of London. The site of much archaeology, mythology, conjecture and rumour. And finance.

I wrote thirteen poems incorporating my experiences of this complex place, many of them weaving personal experience of being a woman and a mother, with this area of the City of London. The poems became a map, Amniotic City, thanks to the artistic talent and skill of my best friend, and is now the first collection of poems I have self-published.

I took some of the maps up to Occupy St Paul’s this week, feeling a surge of energy there, in that space I have haunted, which gave me hope that it is possible to change this frightening and untenable situation that we, the 99% find ourselves in.

People are busy, determined, friendly and ready to talk. The site is well organised, with a superb Information tent and Tent City University with a full timetable of workshops and talks going on. More support and ‘new blood’ is needed to go and occupy as the current occupiers get worn out and lives cannot be put on hold forever.

Do not believe what you read: the tents ARE occupied (of course) and these are people who believe so fervently and strongly about what thay are doing, that they have managed to put their normal everyday commitments to one side for a time.

Go and experience it for yourself if you can. I wish I could say that I would go up there and spend some time being an occupier but as a single parent of a four year old that option is not possible.