As you might know I'll be hosting Jedburgh's participation in the Fallow Land Project for the next five months. As part of  that  I’d like to invite writers to contribute to the art works around the project by writing one or more haiku. A haiku is a short Japanese poem consisting of three phrases composed of seventeen syllables, in a five-seven-five pattern. Quite often there’s a seasonal reference.

The primary theme is fallow which can be understood literally, usually agriculturally, or metaphorically, for example relating to spiritual growth. Other related themes are land use and ownership, soil, the food environment and sustainability.

You can submit as many as you like on as many relevant topics as you wish. If contributors wish I’ll then figure out a way of presenting everyone’s haiku(s) in small publications using folded card and paper as well as putting them on my website where I'll be updating progress regularly. It would be wonderful if you were able to participate and of course if you want to write something more substantial please do!

Please email me your poems (as word docs preferably):-[email protected]

Provisional deadline: Friday 21 February 

There’s a very good Wikipedia entry if you want to dig deeper:-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku

And here’s a link to the Fallow Land project:-https://www.artwalkporty.co.uk/project/fallow-land/ 

As part of the Fallow Land project I've made a good start to the the year with my plans to host a series of four artworks in and around Jedburgh between January and April. I had the idea from the excellent work done by Artwork Porty over the years. The idea is to invite people to walk and reflect upon the environments encountered during the walk. Walks can be medium specific, for example a soundwalk, or more general, for example to make connections between creative people.

The first walk is fully signed up and we'll be doing a four mile circuit along the back roads and woodlands above Jedburgh to the south-east. In preparation for this I'm learning from local farmers, informing myself about what goes on in the fields. This is an important part of the project, investigating the patterns of activity in the managed landscape, from land ownership to land use to food growing, from which some kind of art work will emerge.

My hope is that we'll get talking and learning about not only about the land and landscape but also about how we might make art in and around the topics and themes that arise. This occupies me regularly on my walks and I'm always relish the opportunity to listen to ideas from other artists. 

For the next three walks, at the end of the month from February to April, I want the groups to consider particular art forms, especially sound, lens-based media and  writing though I imagine these will all fuse together over time.

I had to get two projects finished recently. These were the kind of ideas that open the door, live in your head and won't go away. So I did them. The first is a sound piece on Doric Scots, my mother tongue, almost incomprehensible to non Scots speakers, and often to me, especially the agricultural variety.

I've taken two phrases in which the speaker doesn't understand what the indeterminate other speaker is saying, in this case disnimakonysins, 'it doesn't make any sense' and  cannamakootfityersayin, 'I can't make out what you're saying' (both tracks linked in grey). The Scots speaker is saying, in Scots, what the non-Scots speaker is thinking, in English. 

​I love this stuff. It's a fight back against the onward march of linguicide, the death of a language, and believe it or not Scots indisputably is a language.

The second project is a simple field recording of me making a fire. Moving a grumpy dog, raking out the ashes, fetching the kindling, wood and anthracite and so on. No big deal, just interesting to my ears so I've shared it. It's called make a fire.

Today I had the rare pleasure of sitting down in the studio with Scots poet Craig Aitcheson to record his magnificent tribute to one of the most iconic rivers, entitled simply Tweed. Craig will be publishing this new piece with art work from Rosemary  Everett.

​We also talked about the best way to begin representing Scots and Scots literature, spoken word and other forms. The starting point, we agreed, is quite straightforward. We make art works in or about the Scots language and invite others to join us.

Maks sinse.

Some day soon I'll perform alongside these objects which are inanimate and animate simultaneously.

When I get to rehearsing my first steps will be to find initial boundaries, main ingredients and remember the continual interchange between making, listening and observing. 

This is my orchestra just now
a small collection of
battery powered motors
phone vibrators
small speakers
dictaphones
contact microphones
a hand-made bowed psaltery (under the desk)

Analogue synth-maker and tape machine hacker James Pearson will join me soon for sonic experiments in speciation and heterosis.

​His synths..

Over the last week or so we've been thinking about sites for planters to fill with seeds and eventually edibles. Bob Dawson and I had a walkabout and identified between twelve and fifteen sites around the town that would be excellent places to put planters and maybe some more benches nearby so that people could enjoy the views over the town, the river, the abbey and so on.

We also looked at the Greyfriar's garden with its herb allotments begging to be tidied up and replanted with something approaching the original herbs. So far so good except for a nagging trend for institutions to throw health and safety and other bits of red tape at you when you try to do something simple and beneficial. They always want you to be constituted which immediately bogs you down in time wasting trivia. It probably comes from a hierarchy of people covering their arses but nevertheless. The way I look at things anyone putting obstacles in your way should set out to find solutions and fix it. They are after all being paid. Fortunately we have a new Community Council with good people on board - do-ers rather than paper shufflers - so I'm confident that with this umbrella body we can provide good things for the town without too much bureaucracy.

I also learned about food sovereignty. In simple terms this is defined as a food system where the people who produce, distribute, and consume food have control over the policies and mechanisms of food production and distribution but in practice it's a complex field. ​Obviously we're not near this yet. What interests me is the notion that there's some kind of human right going on whereby people should expect the state and its offshoots, like councils, to provide, facilitate and promote access to healthy nutritional and inexpensive food. I'll pick away at this in the weeks and months ahead because I'm not seeing much from 'above' and what I do see comes mainly from the excellent work of schools and the NHS, as you'd expect from dedicated professionals whose vocation is to care for people and thereby develop a civilised society. The easiest and best thing councils could do is stop junk food retailers from setting up in Borders towns. I suppose you could argue that it's what people want. I know a few middle aged men who want strip clubs and massage parlours up the High Street but I can't see that happening. 

​Here's a rough plan of the sites we identified for veggie planters in 2025. We had the idea of making a sort of accessible trail that people could follow and take rest at various points. The sites are un-named and in blue - hopefully you can distinguish them from the other markers.