Holme Fell: A Sample of Landscapes is the title of a new collaboration between myself and Trev Eales, based on, coming out of, springboarding from, his photographs of the Lake District: Holme Fell in particular, and Hodge Close, an old quarry, as its central node or focus. I am going to blog one poem and photograph (and maybe more) as the project progresses and draws towards its completion and its publication in book form.
Holme Fell (the place) is one of Alfred Wainwright’s two hundred plus Lake District fells, located a few miles north of Coniston, Cumbria. The lower slopes, cloaked in woodland, mask an industrial heritage: reservoirs rewilded, the yawning chasm of Hodge Close, a post-industrial archaeology of slate quarrying. Ascending the fell, trees give way to open hillside topped by rocky outcrops, and a panoramic vista is revealed. The Langdale Pikes dominate a skyline which brims with Lakeland’s finest peaks. (I saw it this week, but we didn't ascend very far.
Holme Fell (the book, and it IS going to be a book!) is a ‘sample of landscapes’ as the subtitle says, in two senses. Firstly, as a series of photographs of Holme Fell, with a focus on Hodge Close, the old slate quarry, at its centre. A deep cavernous, black watery lake with sheer slate sides. Secondly, as a sequence of poetry and prose that reacts to the photographs themselves, and through which are also woven some historical accounts of quarrying along with the narrative of a contemporary architect escaping her responsibilities but questioning the nature of things as she encounters them. ‘Hodge Close’ operates as an inner section of ‘Holme Fell’, landscape within a landscape, which mimes the geography.
The images and texts exist in a loose symbiosis, with parallel truths and connecting paths between them. And look, it's nearly become a book. Here's a coffee table image of the single proof. More news soon nearer publication!
Here is another piece from before the 'Hodge Close' sequence with an image to accompany it. 'Prose fiction' passages, as I said, run through the poem, and this is one. (It gives little of the narrative away.)
15
It’s six months since The Incident, the accusations, the retributions, the shame, all following their well-trodden professional paths. She has ample time, now, anonymously, to tread these other paths, uneven, gravel and grit underfoot, walls hugging tracks to this high point, one of the peaks of Holme Fell, overlooking the reddish hump of Lingmore Fell with its black eyes of rock staring out, a thin wall snaking around its shoulders. Mist down in the valley, a silver gauze, lifts over the hill-face above, vaporising the view. It’s a relief to see solitary sheep in the slanting fields, farmhouses with neat hedges and piles of taut green and black plastic rolls, smoke from lazy chimneys, red cars in driveways, a lone figure sauntering along the gulf that passes for a road, between high dry-stone walls and tall hedgerows. Imaginary birdsong. Rusty foliage on the elms, though some are dead spindles, even here, where the planet’s ills might be imagined as absent. Or impeded by beauty.
She settles on a
warming tussock, opens her copy of an antique volume she bought for solace in
the antiquarian shop in Cartmel, Gibson’s The Old Man:
… You hold the road to your right, and a precious steep, rugged sample of a
road it is; but as you gradually surmount the ascent, you may take a
retrospective glance, now and then, at the beautiful vale, or rather dell, of
Tilberthwaite, and the mountains with which it is ‘paled in’, all of these
being surmounted by the massive Weatherlam, which is seen to much advantage,
and shews itself to be a magnificent hill …
She is interrupted
by a vlogger approaching in his boots, shorts, peaked hat, with rucksack and
electronics, white terrier sniffing the tufts of grass by the path-side. He
doesn’t seem to see her sitting there. He’s mansplaining on video, though his
limping wife is trailing far behind and can’t hear his huffing. ‘It’s a
beautiful day – a little misty – shame – but look at the farms – Little
Langdale – when you stand here – you feel like the king – of all you surveil –
believe me!’
Trev Eales is a photographer specialising in landscape photography and rock concerts and festivals, based in South Cumbria. He and I met at university in Norwich in October 1974, over half a century ago, and we’ve been in touch over all those years. We meet up regularly in Lancaster for discussions and entertainment. He has a website here: Trev Eales Photography. You could spend hours lost in his back-catalogue. Here’s an interview with him about his work: Capturing the Festival Spirit with Trev Eales · Lomography. All good things come in threes, so here’s a third site: Articles by Trev Eales’s Profile | eFestivals.co.uk Journalist | Muck Rack. This is a list of links to Trev’s reviews of festivals and gigs for Louder than War, via the Muck Rack site.
All my information is everywhere on this blog of course, but I did write (but never delivered) a talk on my use of photographs in my writings, here: Pages: Robert Sheppard: Talk for the Open Eye Gallery on Poetry and Photography December 2016.
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The first 'showing' (also a Hub post for all the 'Holme Fell' posts of pre-publication excerpts) may be found here: Pages: Trev Eales and Robert Sheppard HOLME FELL: a Sample of Landscapes Number One
