The latest volume of Darklore is out, featuring my collected Strange & Norrell inspired articles (amongst lots of other wonderful stuff). Paperback Darklore IX paperback on Amazon US Darklore IX paperback on Amazon UK Limited…
On Saturday the 2nd of April 2016 the Spirits of Place symposium was held at Calderstones Mansion House here in the heart of South Liverpool.
The whole thing came about when I saw that the venue was for hire and I started thinking about what kind of event it would be great to see there. Something the likes of which people who live in London, or Brighton say, might be quite used to seeing advertised but which there never seem to be very many of up here in the North. Something which fused historical and archaeological topics with things like folklore and myth and literature. Something which spoke of the stories – public, personal, true and otherwise – embedded and encoded in the landscape. Tentatively I made some enquiries, things spiralled quickly, and within a month I found myself at the helm of an actual event that had speakers and tickets for sale and was definitely an actual real thing.
And then, on Saturday, it happened. And it was successful. Very successful. And people have sent me lovely tweets, and emails, and even written lovely blogs about it (here and here).
Lots of people have asked me if there will be another one, and do you know what? I think there probably will be. If you’d like to stay informed about that please subscribe here.
Spirits of Place is a one day, multidisciplinary symposium taking place on Saturday the 2nd of April, 2016 in Calderstones Mansion house, Calderstones Park, Liverpool. It’s a kind of cross between a conference and a…
Let me start here by saying that blogging somehow seems like some kind of chore here at the arse-end of 2015. I don’t know exactly when this became the case but it’s not just me; I’ve spoken to a few other people who agree that where they once felt like monthly, weekly, or in some cases daily blogging was just normal, now they struggle to do it at all. No-one calls Twitter micro-blogging any more (if they ever actually did) but that is where I am currently expelling my thoughts, wishes, dreams, and unsolicited opinions 140 characters at a time, pretty much 16 hours a day. That’s almost certainly why I have little appetite for actual blogging these days which, instead of fitting in around (read: “distracting me from”) my proper writing, takes a bit more time and effort. It’s a shame because the nature of Twitter means that things tend to be a bit more throwaway – a blip of information as opposed to a big chunk of it. I should be blogging more, I wish I was, but then I rarely have anything to blog about these days. It’s not like a head off to London and have a big pub meet with loads of Forteans and Landscape Punks and… Oh wait, yes, I did that at the weekend. I’ll tell you about that.