I am currently writer in residence for Frontiers in Retreat on Suomenlinna island, off Helsinki, in Finland, where I am working on a novel, set 200 years in the future, called The Water Age. My working process is embodied and sited: writing on this snow and ice bound island contrasts in interesting ways with earlier…
Category: Frontiers in Retreat
Romanesque
Went to Sant Pere del Burgal near Escalo in the Pyrenees a few days ago to see the 11th century frescos in the church by the Master of Pedret. Below the Holy Family and the saints, Llucia de la Marca is represented. She was the Countess of Pallars Sobira and the sister of the heroine…
Moon Mountain, Fire Mountain
Watched two of Anna Rubio’s beautiful and moving dance films, one made during her Frontiers in Retreat residency in Latvia. She is working with sites – the valley and mountains here, or old neglected stone steps in Latvia, and with natural materials – sheeps fleece, leaves, water, and her dance has a quality of antiquity…
Wind, Water, Bees
The three artists in residence at Centre d’Art i Natura in Farrera, including myself, gave presentations on our work in progress to a local audience on Friday 24 Oct. The room was crowded and there was a very good dialogue with the people who came along. We are doing quite different things. Tuula Narhinen from…
Birds and bees
Woken this morning by a bird – a Great Tit – that had flown into the window and was panicking. Last week I had a Redstart in my bedroom in France. Living inside out or outside in. Listened to Arnau Obiols’ CD Projecte Pirene, making music with nature, which Quelic Berga lent to me. Another…
Fishing in the Library
A fabulous day in the library reading about Farrera – birds and wildlife, plants and landscape, people. I read about barking deer, boars with their striped piglets, wild cats and tufty eared red squirrels, fields of white Narcissus Poeticus, Tengleman’s Owl, Black Woodpeckers, the Capercaillie and the Lammergeir or Bearded Vulture. I feel like I have…
The future and the past
I am working on two new novels. One is set in the late 11th century and features a female troubadour from this village, Farrera. Most of the action takes place in Toulouse and Poitiers, but there will also be some scenes set here and in Aragon. The second new novel I am working on is…
Writing eyrie
Tuula Narhinen, Quelic Berga and I spent the first few days here in Casa Ramon and I grew quite fond of my attic writing eyrie but tomorrow we are moving into the newer, purpose built rooms in the Centre which face out across the spectacular view of the valley and mountains. The skylight in my…
Hippies, Fire Festivals, Obby Oss
I have the synopsis of my novel more or less in shape now. It unfolds from that one line of poetry – A morsel of love’s bread, and its knife. The Centre d’Art i Natura is an interesting building. Above ground it looks like a small outhouse with a large slate roof nearly touching the…
In Farrera at 1365 metres above sea level
Yesterday I said a temporary goodbye to the river Viaur, swollen by the night’s heavy rain and hailstones, and to the heron who is on the weir every morning outside my tiny house in southern France. My friend Rob drove me 6 hours, past Gaillac and Toulouse to the Pyrenees, along the steep sides of…
Tracey Warr Writing 