Dear Nature…
| by Dal Kular |
For the last five decades, ever since my Dad used to take me to visit Redmires Reservoir in his Blue Morris Minor, the Peak District has always felt like another home to me. A space for joy, solace, healing, play, loving and frolicking.
Back in the 80s, I remember sitting on the bonnet of my brother's red mini metro car under Stanage Edge with my boyfriend. Aretha Franklin’s voice oozing Day Dreaming out of the open car windows, accompanied by that cassette tape crackle. I was in love. Aretha was singing for me. Stanage sprawled across the skyline in front of us. The sun drunk-hung and hazy spilling across the valley.
I felt this moment in every way possible and locked it in my heart – a soul-snap I’d pull out of my pocket year after year to relive. The boyfriend has since long gone but the memory is firmly tattooed in my being. Back then, those pull ups and roads were mostly empty. We had the moors and the edge to ourselves. We were irreverent and free. Precious in every way. These were analogue days. All mix-tapes and vinyl. Handwritten love-notes. Waiting at 5pm in the red phone box ‘up road’ for him to call me. Now, being on the moors and on gritstone steps me right back into those days as if the gritstone itself is some kind of ancient data storage.
As a silver-haired-elder creative facilitator, I encourage folks of all generations to bring a mix-tape attitude to their work – the errantry of Aretha and our diasporic bloodlines. To allow themselves to become the thin place, to listen and receive transmissions. To translate this on to paper through collage, pen, ink, paper, images, and poetry. This is alchemical and transcendental work, to touch something profound and to translate it from soul-body to a physical piece to be shared.
Images: Ai Narapol
I aimed to bring this analogue vibe to my Lyrical Landscapes Writing Residency for Peaks of Colour. To have this opportunity to immerse myself in everything I love about nature and the creative arts was precious. I’m deeply grateful for Peaks of Colour for helping realise this dream. For the residency I made a zine, a tiny little home-made magazine that became a holding space for writings and the creative journey, and a place to archive community contributions from the Lyrical Landscapes zine-making workshop which I facilitated in July 2024.
Zine is an attitude too, not just a making. In their most honest form they are errant, deviant, fucking-go-for-it writing. Gorgeous, anarchic, free and roaming. Zines are like going off map and wandering. Despite appropriation by corporations (corporations who desperately miss the point of zine-attitude), analogue zine-making is potent grassroots alchemy.
During the morning of our workshop, we walked through Padley Gorge. We talked, made friends, sat by the river and shared readings and writings. After lunch at Moorland Discovery Centre, we put these all together to make gorgeous zines full of loves, challenges, frustrations, epiphanies, joys, refusals, and belongings. We shared laughter, tears and joy.
Back in the creative studio in my attic, pulling the zine contributions together was pure joy. I began analogue, the way I make all my zines. Collaging pages and words together with glue and scissors. I quickly realised that I had way too much material to smush together and too little residency time! Instead, I had to befriend the digital to make it all work. The end result? A gorgeous 68-page zine. A zine full of wildness. A gift from earth and us, to all of you.
I hope this zine is a thin place too. A transmission from gritstone, from earth, from all the individual contributors. The writings shared to be read aloud like spells. To be carried on the wind and into ears and breaths for those who need it. The writing journeys – prompts waiting for your activation – waiting to feel where you’ll take them. Waiting for you to carry them like seeds and plant them elsewhere.
This zine is for you all. To be carried around on the moors. Along the river. To your local park or cityscape. Waiting for corners and pages to be scuffed-up in your bag. Stained with coffee drips or chai spirals. Edges singed by campfire. To be scribbled on and over. Space for you to add your marginalia and word-medicine. To be shared with friends. Or huddled together on a windy day to write together. Follow the writing journeys or not. Make your own prompts. Use the whole zine as a prompt to get out there and BE. In the here and now. To live outside of chrono-illogical time. To live within the seasons that feel right to you.
Notice notice notice.
Colonialism steals much from us. Yet, colonialism has no idea how to steal our love for earth. We can use these writing journeys as our love notes to earth. As a way to refuse the machine. We can set our imaginations alight. Use our pens to sear the page. Let your words be a sacred love language for earth and for you. May you share your words with your friends, with your ancestors and with us. The future generations are waiting for your words. What will you write to them?
Love Dal x
