New Writing North

Ten Words for a Northern Landscape: Episode 5: Escape

A new podcast about an ancient dale from journalist and broadcaster Caroline Beck.

Somewhere high up in the North Pennines, between and everywhere and nowhere at all, is Weardale, a remote northern dale. It’s a place of old lead mines, deep worked out limestone quarries, and hill farming: the home of day-dreamers, explores, incomers, artists, philosophers, sky-watchers, story tellers and travellers.

Over a series of ten exclusive interviews with writers and poets Caroline goes in search of what it means to leave in England’s last wilderness.

In this episode Caroline explores two experiences of the North Pennines as home: considering it as somewhere that people escape from and escape into.

Caroline talks to Debbie Loane, an artist who relocated to Weardale as a young woman. Her painting was heavily influenced by the industrial archaeology and natural resources; this landscape remains the focus of her work despite no longer living there. Together they discuss the status of an outsider, and the deep and continuing connection that Debbie formed with the area.

Walking across the dale, writer Madeleine Bunting reflects on her childhood in North Yorkshire, and her relationship with her father, the sculptor John Bunting, who installed the family there. Madeleine moved away at sixteen, but returned years later after her father’s death and wrote her memoir The Plot.

Narrated and recorded by Caroline Beck

Produced by Jay Sykes

Ten Words for a Northern Landscape is commissioned Northern Heartlands and produced as part of Durham Book Festival, a Durham County Council event. The recording was made possible by funding and support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Arts Council England. Look out for Ten Words for a Northern Landscape on the New Writing North podcast and Durham Book Festival website.

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Ten Words for a Northern Landscape: Episode 4: Obsession

Somewhere high up in the North Pennines, between everywhere and nowhere at all, is Weardale, a remote northern dale. It’s a place of old lead mines, deep worked out limestone quarries, and hill farming; the home of day-dreamers, explorers, incomers, artists, philosophers, sky-watchers, story tellers and travellers.

Over a series of ten exclusive interviews with writers and poets Caroline goes in search of what it means to live in England’s last wilderness.

In episode four, Caroline meets Lancashire-based writer Carys Davies, whose phenomenal novella West is set in the vast, wild landscape of the American Midwest in the middle of the 19th century. In this book about exploration and walking into the unknown, the sense of an undiscovered landscape offers remarkable parallels with Weardale. Local writers Susan Nicholson and Chris Powell of the North Pens writing group also discuss the book and its resonance with the area, while Chris Scaife, a caver and explorer, talks about the instinct for exploration and the excitement of visiting a place that how not yet been uncovered.

Narrated and recorded by Caroline Beck

Produced by Jay Sykes

Ten Words for a Northern Landscape is commissioned Northern Heartlands and produced as part of Durham Book Festival, a Durham County Council event. The recording was made possible by funding and support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Arts Council England. Look out for Ten Words for a Northern Landscape on the New Writing North podcast and Durham Book Festival website.

#10wordspodcast

Somewhere high up in the North Pennines, between everywhere and nowhere at all, is Weardale, a remote northern dale. It’s a place of old lead mines, deep worked out limestone quarries, and hill farming; the home of day-dreamers, explorers, incomers, artists, philosophers, sky-watchers, story tellers and travellers.

Over a series of ten exclusive interviews with writers and poets Caroline goes in search of what it means to live in England’s last wilderness.

In episode three, Caroline looks at the thin divide between religion, folklore and witchcraft, as well as the ‘othering’ of outsiders and incomers, with local resident John Gall and horror writer Andrew Michael Hurley. Andrew Michael Hurley’s Costa Award-winning novel The Loney – set in an another rural northern landscape – wavers in an unsettling place between the supernatural and the merely strange.

Narrated and recorded by Caroline Beck

Produced by Jay Sykes

Ten Words for a Northern Landscape is commissioned Northern Heartlands and produced as part of Durham Book Festival, a Durham County Council event. The recording was made possible by funding and support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Arts Council England. Look out for Ten Words for a Northern Landscape on the New Writing North podcast and Durham Book Festival website.

#10wordspodcast

Episode two of our new podcast about an ancient dale from journalist and broadcaster Caroline Beck.

Somewhere high up in the North Pennines, between everywhere and nowhere at all, is Weardale, a remote northern dale. It’s a place of old lead mines, deep worked out limestone quarries, and hill farming; the home of day-dreamers, explorers, incomers, artists, philosophers, sky-watchers, story tellers and travellers.

Over a series of ten exclusive interviews with writers and poets Caroline goes in search of what it means to live in England’s last wilderness.

In part two, Caroline meets award-winning nature writer and environmental activist Karen Lloyd, author of The Gathering Tide; A Journey Around the Edgelands of Morecambe Bay and The Blackbird Diaries. While her first book takes in land and the landscape, The Blackbird Diaries takes in the more intimate environment of her own back garden.

Together with Rebecca Barrett, project manager for the North Pennines Area of Natural Beauty, Jill Essam of Harehope Quarry and local resident Carol Inskipp, they discuss how this seemingly wild landscape bears the scars of having been shaped by industry, from lead mining to farming, and how we can work with nature to rewild the area.

Narrated and recorded by Caroline Beck

Produced by Jay Sykes

Ten Words for a Northern Landscape is commissioned Northern Heartlands and produced as part of Durham Book Festival, a Durham County Council event. The recording was made possible by funding and support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Arts Council England. Look out for Ten Words for a Northern Landscape on the New Writing North podcast and Durham Book Festival website.

#10wordspodcast

A new podcast about an ancient dale from journalist and broadcaster Caroline Beck.

Somewhere high up in the North Pennines, between everywhere and nowhere at all, is Weardale, a remote northern dale. It’s a place of old lead mines, deep worked out limestone quarries, and hill farming; the home of day-dreamers, explorers, incomers, artists, philosophers, sky-watchers, story tellers and travellers.

Over a series of ten exclusive interviews with writers and poets Caroline goes in search of what it means to live in England’s last wilderness.

In the first episode, Caroline goes on a journey underground and looks at how the North Pennines’ mines and quarries have proven a rich creative inspiration to writers.

In the former mine at Killhope, she speaks to performers and audience members of Trapped, a physical theatre and film work performed by Experiential. The piece is inspired by the collapse of the San Jose Mine, Chile in 2010, when the world watched as 33 miners were trapped underground for 69 terrifying days.

With poet Sean O’Brien, Caroline also considers WH Auden, a poet known for his urban and urbane writing, but whose obsession with the North Pennines bordered on religious, and inspired many of his greatest poems.

Narrated and recorded by Caroline Beck

Produced by Jay Sykes

Ten Words for a Northern Landscape is commissioned Northern Heartlands and produced as part of Durham Book Festival, a Durham County Council event. The recording was made possible by funding and support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Arts Council England. Look out for Ten Words for a Northern Landscape on the New Writing North podcast and Durham Book Festival website.

#10wordspodcast

Award-winning poet Andrew McMillan takes a deeper look at the poetry of the North, as part of Rich Seams, a brand new podcast series celebrating the best of new and emerging poetry in the North of England.

Andrew’s journey comes to an end, and he wheels his travel suitcase back to the New Writing North offices to chat to Claire Malcolm, and offer up a new poem about what he’s found. Recorded May 2019 in Newcastle upon Tyne.

Award-winning poet Andrew McMillan takes a deeper look at the poetry of the North, as part of Rich Seams, a brand new podcast series celebrating the best of new and emerging poetry in the North of England.

Andrew’s journey brings him to Yorkshire with Rachael Allen, Kit Fan and Zaffar Kunial to consider what it takes to feel at home somewhere and whether the idea of a poetry of the north is really a signpost to a continuous journey rather than a final destination. Recorded on 12 November 2018 in Leeds, West Yorkshire.

Andrew’s journey into the Rich Seams of Northern poetry continues in Manchester, where he meets Hafsah Aneela Bashir and Ian Humphreys to consider how we’re breaking apart a monolithic view of the North and asking whether a convergence of different influences and and experiences is building a new sense of what we think of as the north and its poetry. Recorded on the 5 November in the UNESCO City Literature, Manchester.

Award-winning poet Andrew McMillan takes a deeper look at the poetry of the North, as part of Rich Seams, a brand new podcast series celebrating the best of new and emerging poetry in the North of England.

Andrew joins poets Steve Ely, Amy McCauley and Clare Shaw to think about how places might become mythologised, how we might have to look backwards to find a language and understanding of our present condition and how even recent history can enter the fabric of the legends will tell each other. Recorded on 23rd October in Halifax, West Yorkshire.

To find out more about the Rich Seams podcast, visit durhambookfestival.com.

Award-winning poet Andrew McMillan takes a deeper look at the poetry of the North, as part of Rich Seams, a brand new podcast series celebrating the best of new and emerging poetry in the North of England.

Andrew continues his journey into the Rich Seams of Northern Poetry at the Wordsworth Trust in Grasmere with Cumbrian poets Emma McGorden, Kim Moore and Eileen Pun. Thinking about nature, nurture and the North as a backdrop for bigger experiences, Andrew searches for more answers in his quest, and hears new work from three of our most exciting contemporary poets. Recorded on Monday 15th October at in the library of the Wordsworth Trust in Grasmere, Cumbria.

To find out more about the Rich Seams podcast, visit durhambookfestival.com.

Rich Seams was commissioned for Durham Book Festival. Durham Book Festival is a Durham County Council event, produced by New Writing North with support from Durham University and Arts Council England.