The world of Substack

Over the past few months, I have discovered the world of Substack.

You may already know it but for those who don’t, it is a place for writers and thinkers to set down their thoughts and words. Some content is free, some is by subscription and I have found some beautiful pieces of writing which I would like to share with you. James Roberts “Into the Deep Woods” , David Knowles’ “Elvers by Moonlight” and Sharon Blackie’s “The Art of Enchantment” are just a few of the voices I have found for myself.

Image in black and white of James Roberts artwork — Image by James Roberts from his Instagram account.

We’re always on the edge of the deep woods (the wudurima). Even in a land like this one, farmed for millennia, bitten back and bare. Britain is one of the least biodiverse countries in the world. It has no wilderness, but the wild is everywhere. The wild ignores all borders and pushes its own edges into every available space. This little town is proof with its jackdaw nested roofs, its rook filled trees, its kite and buzzard circled skies, its swift and martin swarmed summers, its dipper flitted, heron speared streams. And the edges of the wild are woven within us, in the threads of our veins, in our rimmed cells. Most of all it’s in the shores of our imaginations, whose borders grow and shrink, shape change and break open continually, like the seashore - the særima. This journey is about wild edges and edge-lands, about how they form, intertwine, merge and dissolve, how they’re never, ever fixed.
James Roberts’ Introduction to ‘Rima’

The world of Substack has allowed me to take little journeys into other people’s lives and find a community which is alive with ideas and overflowing with beautiful words. From reading about the days of a woman living alone in the backwoods in Canada (Emma Monique) to exploring the life and experiences of small holding in rural Brittany (Roselle Angwin), revelling in the stunning word tapestry of David Knowles and learning more from a person living with ADHD and neurodiversity. These personal perspectives are informative, inspiring and often lead down a long rabbit warren! Beware!!

I will finish with this excerpt from David Knowles’ Elvers By Moonlight. His description are perfect to me and the images and sensations that he conjures are addictive.

I hear her first. With a noise like a rusty zipper the sky opens its aiming eye and fires down the great grey bullet of peregrine. She hits the pigeon suicidally hard, slamming it into the ground. It bounces twice, flailing forward like a bundle of rags. But the flacon’s talons have failed to extract more than a down payment of thick powder-grey plumage. So there they sit, the peregrine and the pigeon, each enthroned on their own tussock of sphagnum. Stunned. Winded. Staring at each other, perplexed.

Over the past few months, I have discovered the world of Substack.

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