march 11
154mm x 184mm
18 pages
What started out as 'sixteen photographs' (see below) transmuted into 'hill pond', without any photographs, which became ever less necessary to the project. In fact, the booklet - descriptions of a winter of visits to a hill pond about 40 minutes' walk away, from October 30th to to the first day of skylark song on the hill, on February 12th - underwent a process of ever greater simplification. Its concessions to decoration are now limited to its pale blue-green wrapper that references the colour of a lichen that I regularly found on my walks, and the colour of the title itself, that of dark winter heather. Full stops in the seventeen pieces of writing somehow went missing along the way too, replaced instead by gaps in the text, which hopefully have the function of regulating the pace at which they can be read. Unsurprisingly, these descriptions are as much about the sky and the wind as they are about the pond. Reading them again I am transported entirely to the moments of their birth, to certain patterns of cloud or conditions of light, as well as the curious newt that settled itself in a couple of inches away and watched me as I crouched by the pond to write the very first piece and a chill settled in from that morning's rain.
