Memorious Earth: A Longitudinal Study

Between 2010 and 2015, Autumn Richardson & Richard Skelton produced a series of collaborative artworks, publications and editions about the upland landscapes of south-western Cumbria, in northern England. Key to their work has been the development of the list-poem, which, at its most fundamental, magnifies the act of attention and the facility of language - through naming - to refer to things, places, to life itself. The texts they assemble frequently contain material drawn from a variety of sources: pollen diagrams, dialect glossaries, cartographic records, archaeological tracts - but their repurposing of this material as art is deeply humane, aimed at drawing the attention towards the lost, forgotten or overlooked. It celebrates the poetry and beauty that such attention can reveal, and gently urges each of us towards a more intimate relationship with our natural surroundings.

In January of 2015, the Cumbrian charity Lakeland Arts staged an exhibition of their work at Abbot Hall and Blackwell. The show incorporated printed matter, artefacts, assemblages, music and film from the previous five years, along with new works, including a wolf skeleton focal piece, generously loaned from Kendal Museum.

Memorious Earth collects the artists' Cumbrian work between 2010 and 2015, incorporating all their previously published (and now out-of-print) text works with an introductory overview written by the artists themselves. First published by their own Corbel Stone Press in 2015, this new Xylem Books edition includes two subsequently commissioned pieces, Thwaite and Furness Fells, as well as a gazetteer of place-names from the south-western uplands. Memorious Earth is a vital document of what must surely constitute one of the most significant small-press collaborations of recent years.

Author: Autumn Richardson, Richard Skelton
Publisher: Xylem Books
Published: 08/13/2018
Pages: 172
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.44lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.25w x 0.40d
ISBN: 9781999971847

About the Author
Richardson, Autumn: - "Autumn Richardson is a Canadian poet and publisher. Her work grants quiet attention to the natural world, filtered through a prism of ecology, botanical medicine, mythology and esoteric philosophy. Contemplating landscapes as diverse as the vast northern boreal forests of Canada, the otherworldly karstic plateaus of western Ireland, the arid mountainous regions of Spain, and the ecologically devastated uplands of northern England, she lifts the occult or unseen to the reader's attention. In 2009 she co-founded Corbel Stone Press - one of the UK's foremost small presses dedicated to writing about landscape and nature - with her husband, the UK artist Richard Skelton. Her poetry and translations have appeared in numerous literary journals, pamphlets, anthologies and exhibitions in Canada, the UK, and internationally."Skelton, Richard: - Richard Skelton is an artist, musician and writer from Lancashire in northern England. His work is informed by landscape, evolving from sustained immersion in specific environments and deep, wide-ranging research incorporating toponymy and language, ecology and geology, folklore and myth. Between 2005 and 2011, he ran his own acclaimed Sustain-Release Private Press, publishing music under such names as A Broken Consort, Clouwbeck and Heidika. He currently runs Corbel Stone Press with his wife, the Canadian poet, Autumn Richardson.

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