Elsewhere

Elsewhere are currently hosting my film-poem ‘Landscape With Man and High-Vis Jacket and Alpaca.’

For the last ten years, I’ve made the same train journey through the Hampshire countryside, from London out towards the coast. The landscape has become a familiar companion during this time, although remaining remote and elusive, trapped beyond glass. One night, on a diversion forced by bad weather, the train pulled along a remote area of track, where a high tensile fence had been strung across a patch of flooded marshland. Through the steam on the window, I could make out a man wearing a high-vis jacket staring back at me in front of a tent, an alpaca grazing by his side. This weird, fleeting glimpse into someone’s life formed the basis of a long poem, taking in themes of rootlessness and austerity, one of many poems about place and landscape in my first collection, West South North, North South East.’