Something Light Written

£12.00

72 Pages

145 x 198mm

ISBN 978-1-9162336-7-3

Alice Willitts
Clare Whistler

Co-authored ecopoem composed over fifteen hours on one day in the presence of an oak tree.

Something Light Written Tour

If you have a beloved oak tree and would like us to come and perform Something Light Written please write to us about your tree.

25/26 November 2023
Cambridge: The oak at Elspeth Owen’s studio, Granchester

6 January 2023
Sussex: Forge Lodge oak

Tour dates 2024:

21 March
Cambridge: Churchill’s oak, Churchill College

22 March
Surrey: Words in Worlds at Royal Holloway

15/16 June
Norfolk: Nancy’s oak, Open Garden 11am & 2pm

25/26 June
Sussex

21 September
Glasgow: Suffragette Oak, Kelvingrove Park

Why Clare Whistler and Alice Willitts made the poem in this book

“Our intention was to respond to a set of circumstances and see what arose. We brought our tools, we obeyed our rules, we paid attention, we made.

We placed ourselves side by side and wrote in response to a series of photographs of fallen leaves in the presence of a young oak tree. We were excited to trust ourselves and the tree and the outcome, to see what we discovered and what rituals arose and equally, what might change in our perception as we wrote in a particular place and time. We chose the 3rd of May 2023 with its 15 hours of sunlight for this exploration.

We deliberately set out to gather material by creating our own ritual. We couldn’t know then which material would make the work. We wrote, we photographed, we filmed time-lapse and we made cyanotypes of a new leaf from the oak tree. We would only respond-write on one side of one sheet of paperThe oak tree was our first audience for the spoken poem we’re sharing with you. We edited each other’s original respond-writing over one weekend, in the presence of the oak tree and visitors to the studio. For the live-edit, we passed our respond-writing to the other, stood side by side and attended to releasing its essence into a poem. Using scissors, we cut out the selected words and phrases, stuck them to small cards and pinned them to the wall. We discarded the rest of the writing and didn’t look at it again. The printed poem includes the ritual in the form of short instructions which reflect what arose on the making day, should you want to do something similar.”

Alice Willitts
www.alicewillittspoet.uk

Clare Whistler
www.clarewhistler.co.uk

Published on 24 November 2023 by Elephant Press

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