“Under the ravishing light of an Alaskan sky, objects are spilling from the thawing tundra linking a Yup’ik village to its hunter-gatherer past. In the shifting sand dunes of a Scottish shoreline, impressively preserved hearths and homes of Neolithic farmers are uncovered. In a grandmother’s disordered mind, memories surface of a long-ago mining accident and a ‘mither who was kind’.

In this luminous new essay collection, acclaimed author Kathleen Jamie visits archeological sites and mines her own memories – of her grandparents, of youthful travels – to explore what surfaces and what reconnects us to our past. As always she looks to the natural world for her markers and guides. Most movingly, she considers, as her father dies and her children leave home, the surfacing of an older, less tethered sense of herself. Surfacing offers a profound sense of time passing and an antidote to all that is instant, ephemeral, unrooted.”

Text reproduced from https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1908745819/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 (accessed 01/03/22)

I am about to get very busy with a number of Volunteer roles based primarily at Charterhouse Gardens & Heritage Park for Historic Coventry Trust whose vision is to find innovative ways to sustain historic places and to inspire, involve and connect people with the city’s history.

Historic Coventry Trust have a portfolio of properties preserving the heritage in the City and which they are custodians of. These include Charterhouse, a medieval monastic house. Charterhouse Heritage Park, a wildlife rich habitat and Paxton’s Arboretum located at London Road Cemetery, one of the most important Victorian cemeteries in the country, the recently renovated Burges & Hales Street, home to independent shopping, the City Gates, two medieval gatehouses that formed part of the City Wall, Priory Row, 15^th Century timber framed cottages in the Cathedral quarter of the city (both have been renovated and re-imagined as luxury bolt-holes in which you can book a stay) and the recently renovated music and entertainment venue Draper’s Hall located adjacent to the New Cathedral and Cathedral ruins.

The roles I will be undertaking include Heritage Park Volunteer, Volunteer Research Assistant and Volunteer Kitchen Garden Assistant. The roles include environment management including growing and harvesting fruits, vegetables, foraging and fermenting, gardening, helping to clear weeds, seasonal planting and horticulture, landscape management over the River Sherbourne, the wider woodlands, Charterhouse Heritage Park and Paxton’s Arboretum as well as researching the history of the sites through specific themes and briefs set by the Trust, to help people engage further with the sites through the stories uncovered. The aim is to build and expand the knowledge bank of the sites, which feed into everything from tour guide content, talks, to educational, interpretation and training material. And finally I will be bringing new life to the Charterhouse gardens through the planning and development of the kitchen garden, planting the raised beds and herb garden and following the journey from soil to plate, producing a large harvest and keeping a natural diary to document the journey.

I am passionate about people, place, culture & heritage and how we can co-create meaning, agency, a sense of identity and belonging through collaborative creative practice. I will be conducting these activities alongside my own research organised around four routes; Place, Memory, Identity & Mapping as well as investigating sites of interest, from the statue of a Druid to a mythical island. I will also be continuing in my role as one of the Non-Executive Directors at Holyhead Studios, Coventry, where we host a variety of artists practices from Printmaking to Conceptual Sculpture.

For more information about the portfolio and the work of Historic Coventry Trust click this link Historic Coventry Trust.

Hippolyte Bayard, Portrait of Self as a Drowned Man, 1840

A pathetic shadow is cast/a blast received from the past, sitting
Too weak/to attempt/too attempt/two attempt
Three attempt
Stairs
When you can stand/stand no more/look to the floor
Hot ssss__hhh__aaking palpitations
Sickness vibrations/infinite derivations
Ill defined divagations/multiple citations
Hot sss__ hhh__ a[ching] palpitations
Clinging to…,ears ringing
…Ipad
The darkness is singing, a song
…please move along
…a technical life raft
A digital light/an unwelcome draft
A dark night/an unwelcome draught
Someone laughed/a chill to the marrow
A chill to the morrow/a song of sorrow
Pulse…pulses….pulsing
Almost con-vul-sing
Can’t catch my breath/the sickness unto death
A need to stave the wave/a life I try to save
A diminishing circle of com/
To hold down the Fort
Da
I have to go out/In sane
See words upon the window pane
Home/Sick
Day in/Day out
Groundhog Day
Groundhog Days
Groundhog Daze
Grinding ways
Blinding ways
A life as sickly haze
A body tries to raise
Days full
Of Storm, no lull
Of darkness of sickness of corporeal thickness
This w[hole]
Trying on the soul/heavy on the heart/ LEADEN torture to the mind
In a sickly bind
One step forward/two steps behind
A noose one cannot cut loose
A heavy shroud to wear
Rip, rend and tear
How to repair…a body without spare
Suffocatingitis
Suffocatingitwill
S___u__ff___(0)__c_a_ting

© Denise Startin