Launch of 'The Dark Farms' at Wigtown Book Festival

'The Dark Farms', my new pamphlet from Roncadora Press, will be launched at Wigtown Book Festival on Wednesday 3 October.  You'll find me, a tad keyed up, in the Main Hall in the County Buildings at 1.30pm.  Please book via the Book Festival website - click here.

The Dark Farms focuses on the Galloway Forest Park, its depopulated glens, shrinking agriculture and extraordinarily dark skies.  I worked on The Dark Farms for eight months during 2011, walking the Forest, talking to residents and reading old books and maps.  I also spent several happy hours dodging that summer's steady rain in Newton Stewart Museum, where I encountered the Bull Mask, and the Necklace of Horse's Teeth.

I was lucky enough then to receive an award from Arts Trust Scotland for a mentored week at Cove Park.  What emerged is poetry about remote places; the ghosts of sheep; the vast night skies; the generations of paths made by human feet which have been obliterated by 20th century pine forests.