Exhibition Visit: The Word-Hoard; Love Letters to Our Land. The Wordsworth House, Cockermouth, Cumbria

The Word-Hoard

Love Letters to Our Land

Images and Language of Landscape: an Exhibition by Rosamund, John and Robert MacFarlane

This exhibition is based on Robert MacFarlane's best-selling book Landmarks which I reviewed in my BOW blog. (Link here).  Landmarks is a repository of words about the land that are becoming less and less used and risk disappearing from our language altogether. In the exhibition catalogue MacFarlane questions why we need a rich and diverse language for the living world and why should it matter if we lose words for natural things.  He argues that it does matter because language deficit leads to attention deficit.  He suggests that as we reduce our ability to describe the world around us, so our ability to notice nature is correspondingly reduced.  He describes this situation with an interesting word: smeuse.  A smeuse is an old Sussex term for the 'hole' in the base of a hedge made by the regular passage of a small animal.  Once you know the word, he says, you begin to spot smeuses everywhere.  Without words, the landscape can easily become a blandscape, he says: generalised, indifferent, unobservant.  This is interesting to me, not only because I empathise with his argument, but because my BOW contains several images of smeuses as shown below:-

Robert MacFarlane has curated this exhibition as well as being a part of it in that his word-hoard forms part of the exhibition.

This fascinating collection of words, gathered during his travels around the UK is illustrated by landscape photography taken by his parents, Rosamund and John MacFarlane, who live close by in Loweswater.  Rosamund took up photography seriously over 15 years ago after retiring from medical research, while John has been photographing for the last decade after he retired as physician and Professor of Respiratory Medicine at the University of Nottingham.  In retirement they continue to pursue their passions for photography, mountain walking, wildlife and travel.  Both have gained recognition through international photography competitions and qualifications through the RPS and international associations.
The writing component of the exhibition is provided by calligrapher Susie Leiper whose work is often inspired by mountains.
The photographs illustrating MacFarlane's word-hoard are beautiful, traditional landscape images, each a delight in its own right, but perfectly suited for the word that it illustrates. Apart from smeuse I particularly enjoyed ammil - fine film of silver ice that coats foliage when freeze follows thaw, exmoor.  The accompanying image is of a detailed photograph of an ice coated blade of dead grass with a rushing stream in the background.  Also witches knickers - plastic snagged in trees with a photograph of the same with a mountain background.  Of especial significance for me is lairig - a Scots word for a gap or pass between hills with a photograph of the Lairig Grhu, the highest mountain pass in the country at over 3000 feet, taken from a 1000 feet higher on Braeriach.  I walked through this pass as a teenager and again descended into it recently on a three day wild camping exhibition with my brother.

After Landmarks was published many people sent in a whole host of other words to Robert Macfarlane either in letters or as postcards.  These are exhibited in a display case.

One word from the book that particularly resonated with me, coming from the county, was the Lincolnshire word squad meaning mud.  In the winter, when walking and looking for images for my body of work, my boots are often sprunk with squad!  The images below were taken when I was working on assignment 3.