Hazel Press newsletter: Summer 2023
Our latest book, Burnt Rain - Charleston Festival of the Garden - Primadonna Festival - Hazel blog - Chalk streams - New Networks for Nature
Next month we publish Burnt Rain, a powerful, compelling polemic by veteran eco-protestor Roc Sandford.
Thirty years ago, Roc bought a small, bleak island in the Hebrides. His aim was to live there largely alone, without mains services, and manage the land for wildlife. But the place had a different destiny in store. Far from being an unspoilt haven, Gometra was in ecological crisis, caused by climate breakdown. Sandford found himself confronting the barest truths about humanity and the environmental costs of our actions.
In spring 2019, the more-than-human voices of Gometra inspired him to travel to London and join the Extinction Rebellion protests, where he spent time locked-on under a lorry on Waterloo Bridge.
Full of rage, tenderness and weather, Burnt Rain is a brave, headlong gallop into one man’s attempt to live in full knowledge of the unfolding climate disaster. It follows the wheel of the year to chronicle his relationship with the living world in one of the UK’s remotest places.
This short paperback is printed in Suffolk using vegetable inks on 100% UK recycled paper with glue-free thread binding. You can pre-order copies here.
Join us at Charleston Festival of the Garden, 13-16 July
Visit us at the Hazel Press Caravan nestled in the Paddock for impromptu poetry readings, a conversation about greener publishing practices, and to enjoy writing relating to spirit of place.
On the Friday, Saturday and Sunday mornings we will be holding a free contemplative drawing workshop. Take some time out as Hazel’s Sara Hudston encourages you to take inspiration from the spirit of place and the living world. Suitable for all artistic abilities, the session is all about process – it’s not a lesson and it really doesn’t matter how “well” you draw!
We are part of the informal drop-in fringe events that run alongside the main stage ticketed events for the duration of the Festival of the Garden. All events are free and there is no need to book.
On Friday 14th July at 7pm Edmund de Waal will be speaking about his Hazel book Perdendosi as part of the main festival. You can book tickets here.
Primadonna Festival
The Hazel Caravan is returning to the wonderful Primadonna Festival in Stowmarket, Suffolk, on 28-30 July.
Primadonna is a festival for people who love books, ideas, music, good food in a field and interesting conversations. Come and visit us there too!
New on the Hazel blog
This spring the blog has been enveloped in clouds of drifting pollen, witnessed poet Terry Gifford’s chained swan and joined Jane Brockett in a Proustian swooning of May blossom.
We find that after nearly a month without rain across much of the UK, Ilaria Boffa’s poem ‘Make Me Ready’ has special force:
Make me ready
for the arrival of the rain
which is expected heavy
but needed.
Show me
what I can get rid of
pruning shrubs
along the fluvial corridor.
And if we must leave
the fourth industrial revolution behind
this augmented social reality
to repair our notion of mortality
help me not to falter.
We may remain one day
one last day.Owned by everyone?
With river pollution much in the news, we recently attended a two-day assembly of activists, river-keepers, water chemists, environmental lawyers, illustrators, conservationists, fishermen, artists, kayakers, wild swimmers, politicians, community groups, writers, artists and underwater photographers to discuss and debate the plight and future of English chalk streams.
The gathering in Cambridge was convened by the Cambridge Conservation Initiative, Mark Wormald, chair of the Ted Hughes Society, and WildFish.
We found it stimulating, enraging and insightful. See what you think - you can listen to the presentations here.
New Networks for Nature
A quick look ahead to Nature Matters in Norwich in November (that's a lot of alliteration!) when Sara will be chairing a session on poetry, water and climate with Hazel poets Ruth Padel and Sean Borodale, plus poet and conservationist Matt Howard.
Nature Matters is New Networks for Nature’s (NNN) annual three-day creative celebration of the living world in words, music, film, art and debate. NNN is a broad alliance of creators, including poets, authors, scientists, film-makers, visual artists, environmentalists, musicians and composers, whose work draws strongly on the natural environment.
The annual meetings grew out of dissatisfaction with the way in which wildlife and landscapes are so often evaluated exclusively in economic or scientific terms when they are a resource at the very heart of human creativity.
Programme details and tickets available here.
thank you for reading,
Daphne and Sara