Episode 105 - Evade the Constrictor

Back in the Imaginal Field, skylarks spill their trailing cascades above the field like sugar on the tea break tablecloth. Sweetness above, mud underfoot.The last week of winter neatly folds down the sheet on spring’s bed. Dock seeds scatter the floor of the shepherd’s hut where my new books sit on a Formica table like two eggs in a nest. Damp air has buckled the essay’s nine printed sheets, the broadside print poem, and the other concertina book I left out overnight as an experiment. Wood fibres, even at so far a remove from their arboreal beginnings, cannot help but draw water into themselves.Similarly, given space and time, now reconstituting myself after three months’ absence from your inboxes, I find I must write. Capillary action: clay drawing-up water, paper soaking-in ink, is at the heart of my visual arts practice. Dry materials drink to create the longed-for form, whether pastel stick or drawing. Back in the flat fields of the once-was-fens, new to me in sodden guise, the chilly damp atmosphere, much to my surprise, hydrates the Muse, desiccated by a hard winter of additions and subtractions. You cannot account for the imaginal, nor factor its flow. The book of Uncivil Savant did not send up shoots this winter, it is still germinating in the dark. Artemis Scribe shot up instead; a little letterpress chapbook with a poem distilled from last summer’s scorching art residency in the Imaginal Field, in the East of England. You can read the essay I wrote there, here. The heat of those June days lifted pollen high into the air, which descended at dusk to land on us, nestled four feet below sea level on these pumped-dry fields. I sniffed and sneezed and wrote and talked with my hosts. This time, all the artists who took part in residencies are here and the conversations we are sharing over the weekend feel like spring water to me.Read the whole piece, with footnotes, photos, links and more, here on Substack, first published March 5th 2026. Get full access to Uncivil Savant at carolineross.substack.com/subscribe