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.

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