Saturday 25th May. 10am – 1pm. Beginning at the Scriptorium, Arbroath Abbey.

to scribe : to write, to note, to inscribe or make marks, to describe, to record

“an original manuscript has always something which print itself must inevitably lose. An erasure, even a blot, a casual irregularity of hand … bring us close to the writer, and perhaps convey some of those subtle intimations for which language has no shape”. Nathaniel Hawthorne

Cartographic maps “miss what was,” says Michel de Certeau; “the act itself of passing by”. Participants will cover a circular route along the mediaeval roads north of Arbroath, stopping as they wish to record what they see, feel or think. Our route takes in cliff-top views, prehistoric sites, minor roads and rough tracks, fields and farms. Participants are invited to use their own method of scribing (drawing, notes or notation, words, tracings …). Collated, these will become a material, poetic, multi-vocal map of our journey.

* This is a guided cycle, not a led cycle. Participants MUST be cycling proficient and have a bike fit enough to handle the terrain.*

Please bring your own notepads, drawing pads, art materials etc.

Provided are a suggested route map, along with poetry prompts & a list of good places to stop and think.

Published by lesleyharrisonpoetry

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Lesley Harrison lives and works on the Angus coast. In her writing, she explores how it is to live at the southern, temperate edge of a much colder northern world. She has held writing residencies in Greenland, Iceland and Svalbard. Drawing from archives, folk myth and cultural memory as well as her own explorations and experience, her poetry and prose make real our negotiation with, and our constant striving to give meaning and scale to, this unstable and ultimately unknowable space. She is a member of the North Sea Poets collective - northseapoets.com.

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