seethingography

Viva Seething

Seethingography was originally a way for me to come down to Seething and start a writing group, and to engage Seething Villagers in thinking about what made the place that they live in special to them. I ran workshops, meet ups and an event for National Poetry Day, plus we went on a drift through Seething to explore its many quirks and secrets.

The blog has seen lots of writing and images exploring this theme, and led to the publishing of two anthologies of writing in The Seethingographer, the first from Seething Writers and the second from writers all over the world (as Seething has no boundaries!) writing on the theme of ‘Going Home’.

Anyone who is familiar with my own writing, and practice as a walking artist, may know that much of my work is concerned with place- how we are affected by it and how we affect it. This led to my publishing a chap book, Villiers Path, about a narrow footpath in Surbiton, which has a surprising history attached to it. I hope to do some walks and performances there later this year. See my blog or Facebook page for updates on this in the Autumn.

I was also lucky enough to publish local ecologist and bat expert Alison Fure’s pamphlet, Kingston’s Apple Story By A Michelson’s Seedling, about the local history and apple growing heritage in the Royal Borough of Kingston Upon Thames and surrounding area. I am delighted to say this is now in its second print run, and I have been chuffed to be able to support Alison’s drive to try to save the Tolworth Apple Store in publishing this important work.

Chapbooks are for sale here at £2 + £1.20 p&p

The chapbooks were published by Sampson Low Ltd, a wonderful and historic publisher, and I am very grateful to Alban Low for his support.

Thanks as ever to The Marvellous Smellymaroo for her skill and kindness with design and layout of all the chapbooks.

I was very lucky to be able to use the Museum of Futures to hold events and workshops for Seething Writers, and am grateful to Robin Hutchinson and the Community Brain for allowing me to do so. Thank you!

This is my final post for now for Seethingography. I am handing it over to the lovely Seething folk, Simon Tyrrell and Sharon Zeqiri, who took over the running of Seething Writers earlier this year.

Seething is believing….So long and thanks for all the sardines!

Lucy Furlong

http://www.lucyfurlong.com/

Lucy Furlong is a widely published writer, performer and walking artist. Her poetry map, Amniotic City, was featured in The Guardian and her pamphlet , clew, was published by Hesterglock Press in 2015. Her poetry map, Over the Fields, was published in September 2015, and her latest chapbook, Villiers Path, was published by Sampson Low this year.

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August 24, 2017 by lucyfurleaps Categories: art, chapbook, community, creativity, editor, event, found poem, home, orchards, photograph, place, poem, publish, seething writers, seethingography, spirit of seething, story, submit, suburbs, Surbiton, the seethingographer, Tolworth, Uncategorized, villagers, walking, walking in seething, what is seethinography, words, wordsmithery, workshop, writing, writing exerciseTags: adieu, apples, chapbook, community, creativity, history, photographs, place, published, publishing, seething, seethingography, so long and thanks for all the sardines, suburbs, walking, writing, writing workshop 3 Comments

The Teapot

Once when I was young and naïve I destroyed a green teapot with a black lid by putting it down the rubbish chute of the flats I lived in. It was a blameless item, existing its little heart out from home to home, its final place that flat in a boxy brick estate lit by round streetlights, the bushes below the window precipitating hordes of small green flies up through the windows on summer nights when the blue sign of the Cunard Hotel glared sullenly across the void at us. The windows faced westwards; so no sunrise to greet our morning egg and toast and marmite, if there ever was such a thing. But sunsets, over the bend in the river a mile away, roaring in silent sheets of flame.

I once wondered how large a sunset actually is. Is it the size of a memory? Does it have a real extent? The Northern Lights show up on film when invisible to the eye.

Although there were no stars in our night sky, there were robins singing their hearts out as we walked from the Tube station, across the sullen dark of the main road, up the street of Victorian houses and into the flats like a rabbit turning tail and darting down its burrow to safety from the drifting hawk, the prowling fox.

Home. Where I felt safe. Home.

http://chramies.typepad.com/

Chris Amies was born in south London and lived for many years in Hammersmith, which still appears in much of his fiction. He is the author of one published novel (“Dead Ground”, published by Big Engine and reissued by Clarion), one non-sfiction book (Hammersmith and Fulham Pubs, published by Tempus) and about 25 short stories, and has reviewed fiction for the BSFA and Tangent Online. He recently diversified into anthology editing (“NeaDNAthal” available from Fringeworks) and full-length translations from French.

August 22, 2017 by lucyfurleaps Categories: flash fiction, home, seething writers, seethingography, story, streets, suburbs, Surbiton, Uncategorized, words, writingTags: flash fiction, going home, seething, seethingography, story, teapot 2 Comments

Nobody Knows

There’s a place you go

Where nobody knows

Where the rain doesn’t fall

And the wind doesn’t blow

Where the sun doesn’t shine

And the earth doesn’t grow

Where the Shepherd doesn’t lead

And the Mower doesn’t mow

There’s a place you go

Where nobody knows

Where secrets stay hidden

And you don’t have to show

There’s a place you go

Where nobody knows

There’s that place you go

And Nobody knows

Marcia Knight-Latter

August 21, 2017August 21, 2017 by lucyfurleaps Categories: creativity, home, kingston upon thames, place, poem, seethingography, suburbs, the seethingographer, Uncategorized, words, writingTags: creative writing, kingston university, place. going home, poem, seethinography Leave a comment

Home (today)

Andy Harrod

I write not out of a desire to tell stories, but a need to understand what it is to be alive. Though the use of writing, art and photography I explore themes of love, loneliness, despair, hope and the individual. I believe creativity is at its most beautiful when it challenges; wanting my writing and art to make people pause, reflect and feel. I am interested in if and when do we awake to our life, to a sense this is it and to living in the moment. I am curious to why for so many of those moments we are not authentic, instead we live hidden behind masks and afraid to be who we are; ruled by external messages, expectations and demands on us, rather than guided by our sense of self and the present. My writing is fuelled by the hope that by engaging authentically with ourselves and others we stop fearing difference and embrace our own individualism and enjoy this collective individualism. The rest is up to each of us.

View my writing and books at http://decodingstatic.co.uk.

Contact me at andy@decodingstatic.co.uk or on twitter @DecodingStatic.

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August 7, 2017 by lucyfurleaps Categories: apples, art, creativity, home, photograph, place, poem, the seethingographer, Uncategorized, words, wordsmithery, writingTags: going home, photograph, poem, seethingographer, writing 1 Comment

Going Home

Tammy wished she hadn’t bothered going home for her father was still drunk and ranting at the television and her mother still faffing about in the catastrophe of the kitchen and the green Atlantic still heaving at the end of their garden.

There was no milk for tea so she went to the beach. A lone row-boat slapped against the sea-wall. A puppy lay immobile in the bilge-water and Tammy picked it up, thinking it was dead, but its limp body stirred. She put it inside her coat for it was ice-cold and hurried home. She didn’t care what they would say; she was keeping it.

Her mother filled a basin with warm water and put the little creature in it. It began to mew and Tammy looked for something to feed it with but there was nothing in the fridge but a piece of hard cheese. Then her mother pressed her finger to her lips and took out a glass of milk from the cupboard. ‘Don’t tell your father.’

Alison Marr

Alison Marr is a musician and poet, originally from Northern Ireland, who now lives in London. She writes short stories and poetry.

https://oldclock3.wordpress.com/

July 30, 2017 by lucyfurleaps Categories: creativity, flash fiction, home, place, seethingography, story, the seethingographer, words, wordsmithery, writingTags: flash fiction, going home, story, the seethingographer Leave a comment

Homewards

Home is not a place,

home is a time.

A dot in time.

A non-dimensional point in time.

A time in the past, but not gone.

It’s not what happened, but what you kept.

A time in the future, but already known.

It’s not what will happen, but its meaning.

Home is not a place – home takes place.

Home is being accepted without any exam – as a tree or as clouds.

Home is being welcomed long before you arrive.

Home is belonging – or rather having belonged.

Home is a point in the chest that keeps us breathing.

Juan Maria Solare

Composer and pianist, Juan María Solare, was born in Buenos Aires (Argentina) in 1966 and has lived in Germany since 1993. Solare teaches piano at the Musikschule Bremen, tango music at the Universität Bremen and Composition and Arrangements at the Hochschule für Künste in Bremen. He conducts the Jacobs Chamber Orchestra at the Jacobs University Bremen, and the symphonic orchestra of the Bremer OrchesterGemeinschaft.

His compositions are performed throughout Europe and broadcasted regularly. As pianist, centre of his repertory are the contemporary classical music (Cage, Schönberg, Pärt) and Argentine tango music – featuring his own works in both categories. He writes for music magazines (Madrid, Mexico, Buenos Aires, Köln, London) and for the radio (Deutsche Welle, Südwestfunk).

www.JuanMariaSolare.com

https://open.spotify.com/artist/0sr00YxbHKRAruzYrJ6PEg

July 28, 2017 by lucyfurleaps Categories: creativity, home, poem, seethingography, the seethingographer, words, wordsmithery, writingTags: going home, poem, the seethingographer Leave a comment

Meditation on Hiraeth

I am coming back to me.

I see my reflection in the landscape,

in the place, in the sounds, the smells, the language.

I see myself, whole.

Feel my feet planted in the ground.

Sense my roots deep and strong.

I feel the living wood,

the sun on my skin, filling me with light.

Hear the breath of the breeze move through me.

Feel the cool water as it runs over my feet.

Feel it in my veins. Taste it.

It is a part of me.

Let me sit on this hillside,

body close to the earth,

The rhythm of life beats in me,

As above, so below.

My heart sings out loud, a ‘calon lan’,

I am of the land where Oaks grow

and birdsong fills my being.

I am home.

Ruth Raymer

Ruth is a walker, thinker, dreamer and writer. She says that her soul speaks in Welsh and Hiraeth pulls her back to Wales at every opportunity.In October 2017, she will embark on PhD research at the University of Essex as a CHASE DTP scholar, writing on the concept of Home and the human search for it.

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July 26, 2017 by lucyfurleaps Categories: creativity, ecology, heritage, history, home, photograph, place, poem, seethingography, the seethingographer, Uncategorized, walking, weather, words, wordsmithery, writingTags: elan valley, going home, hiraeth, home, photograph, place, poem, seethingographer, wales, walking, writing 3 Comments

Going Home

She leaves the house, carrying a dark red leather luggage and a small handbag. She is wearing the perfect tan colour coat for Autumn weather. It is 1941. Another war has begun and she has decided to end her own. She has left a two page letter for Frank. She made sure no essential words were left out. She sliced her heart open in explaining her reasons. The ones he would never understand. She walked by the river and remembered the many times she wanted to make everything silent, to cool down her incandescent feelings for her girlfriend Susan. But today, she passed the river in the direction of the train station. She has decided for once and all to find her home, where her heart belongs. She must go. London and Susan were expecting her at 2pm. The train window framed the country landscape that she has to escape. The city is the ticket for her freedom. Susan is the one for love. She is now going home.

Alessandra Salisbury

Alessandra Salisbury is a Brazilian journalist, actress and creative writer. She lives in Australia with her husband and their 5 year old daughter Isabella, who was the inspiration for Alessandra’s first published kids book Naughty Nana, for sale on Amazon. Her works appeared and are forthcoming in the American literary magazines, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Borfski Press, and BlogNostics.

July 24, 2017 by lucyfurleaps Categories: creativity, flash fiction, home, place, seethingography, story, the seethingographer, words, wordsmithery, workshop, writingTags: flash fiction, going home, the seethingographer, writing Leave a comment

Standing on the lid of Seething Wells

Painting by Simone Kay

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July 10, 2017 by lucyfurleaps Categories: art, community, creativity, face embellishment, heritage, history, home, local, place, seething writers, seethingography, spirit of seething, suburbs, Surbiton, Thames, the seethingographer, villagers, walking, walking in seething, what is seethinography, words, wordsmithery, writingTags: art, painting, seething wells, seething writers, seethingography, walking Leave a comment

The Seethingographer #2 Summer 2017: Going Home

We are delighted to launch the second issue of The Seethingographer today!

This is a collection of writing and images on the theme of ‘Going Home’. Submissions were opened up worldwide, and we had an amazing international response!

A word from our guest editor Sinead Keegan…..
Reading through the submissions for this issue of The Seethingographer was a peek behind the curtains and around the corners of the spaces people call home. These pages are filled with the nuances of what it means to go home, from Alan Boyce’s gritty reality of homelessness to the hearth fairy of Julia Rose Lewis. Sometimes we find ourselves on the threshold, neither home nor away from home, as in Roger Leege’s ‘Fast Food’ which showed me a moment from my own childhood, and Maite Lisa Jordao’s permanent liminal emigrant existence ‘Coming Home’. Whether you know the places described, or they are alien, like Jim Lawrence’s cosmic view ‘Super Ape’, at the heart of all the pieces is the home we all know or perhaps long for. Enjoy the journey. Enjoy the homecoming.

Thanks to Alban Low at Sampson Low Ltd and to The Marvellous Smellymaroo for design and layout. Buy a copy of The Seethingographer #2 here for £2 + £1.20 p&p