Tag: animals
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No Rural Fantasy
The anti-pastoral of Cynan Jones I’m a Londoner through and through; a city person fascinated by everything the city is not. The rural worlds outside of mine are compelling, attractive, and occasionally frightening. I admit, as I head into my thirties, I feel the pull of an idea of being out in the country somewhere….
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Books of the Month
February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 Like a Tree, Walking Vahni Capildeo Carcanet November 2021 Pothos Rosa Campbell Broken Sleep Books October 2021 Cartographies of the Imagination Kirsty Badenoch, Sayan Skandarajah (editors) September 2021 Epic Camilla Nelson Guillemot Press August 2021 Echtrai Journal B G Nichols / Bran Graeme Nairne (editors) AnMór July 2021 Florilegia…
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The Dogs of El Chalten
The village of El Chalten is a service settlement. Located in the Parque Nacional los Glaciares in Patagonia, southern Argentina, the village is a four-hour walk to a network of ancient blue-white glaciers and the sharp, serrated peaks of Fitz Roy, Cerro Torre and Cerro Chalten. Thousands of tourists come to El Chalten each year,…
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Psychosis in the Andes
Dr Patricio practices indigenous medicine in a small clinic in the Andes. Sometimes he describes himself as a doctor, sometimes as a yachac or shaman. Here, the two are interchangeable. Western and indigenous medicine inform and shape each other. The clinic in which he practices is called Jambi Huasi, meaning ‘House of Health’ in Kichwa,…
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100 poems in a day
On 22nd November 2013, Claire Trevien recklessly agreed to write 100 poems in a single day in order to raise money for Refuge. That’s more than she usually writes in a year. Below are three of our favourites. Message in a bottlenose dolphin* for Tori clickclickclickclick arw clickclickclickclick crrrrrreak clickclickclickclick arw clickclickclickclickclickclick whipewhipe…
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Waste (extracts)
You think in the animal kingdom there’s no waste cause you’re nice and shun anthropomorphism but actually there’s a lot I mean you’re nice and don’t want to imbue empty human qualities onto black eyes but actually there’s a lot If you don’t believe me, get out of the city and look in the dirt,…
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PYG
Toby is one influential pig. As the very first learned pig to turn his tricks upon the stage, he provided a template for countless subsequent acts at fairs and festivals throughout the nineteenth century, and following this proliferation, a richly evocative motif for poets and sundry satirists. He is also, of course, the inspiration for…
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The Jambi Huasi Clinic
The town of Otavalo, just two hours from Quito, is a place where Ecuador’s indigenous Andean population has thrived for thousands of years. The Quichua indígenas (indigenous people) in Otavalo make up a large proportion of the city’s population and although many still live in poverty, the socio-economic status of the community is high compared…
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The Island
I. He covers my eyes with a blindfold of elderberries and makes me promise not to peek. He thrusts a lead in my hand and, with a clicking noise out the side of his mouth, it rapidly becomes clear that we are sitting in something and that the something is moving. I peek between my…
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Dead Bears and Pylons
“What the hell is that?” The man was at the bottom of Millfields Park in Hackney, can of lager in hand. He frowned across the Lea River at a cormorant bobbing in the water. “I dunno,” said his girlfriend as I passed by. “A black swan?” When many Londoners come to the eastern edge of…