Walking Commentary
Thoughts while waiting to walk from Manchester to Rome in 2022
I’m pleased to write that chapbook subscriptions have gone well. My thanks to all you early movers. You enabled me to confirm the viability of the publication for 2022 and in return for your advance commitments, you secured heavily discounted pricing. I’ll honour that price no matter when you confirm your subscription.
The Wild Atlantic Way
There had been a plan to walk from Manchester to Rome in 2020. It was thwarted by SARS-CoV-2 restrictions in 2020 and again in 2021. I considered walking one of the world’s longest defined coastal routes instead. The Wild Atlantic Way traces the rugged, indented western coast of Ireland, some 2600 km, the same distance as those pilgrim trails the pandemic put beyond reach.
I started publishing a series of chapbooks in January 2021. Twelve have been produced, themed by my ever changing interests in photography. One month found me studying just one local lighthouse, another month I was shooting a quarry and another, I shot entirely in infrared.
MOMENTS
Reading Caspar Henderson’s 21st Century Bestiary, reminded me that the Czech poet and immunologist Miroslav Holub defined the ‘dimension of the present moment’ as a little less than three seconds.
You might credit the idea for this chapbook theme to Irish sculptor John Behan. I have seen one of his“Bronze Birds in Flight”whipped and wrapped by a trained wisteria. It was reconfigured as an inversion of power, an unintended green tableau, in which the entwining organic leaves appeared to restrain, if not smother, the metal-frozen doves.
This chapbook series started during a time when our movement was restricted to 5 km from home. Here, on the suburban coast of south County Dublin, two thirds of that area is offshore.
