When the Map Runs Out of Ink: Percy Bysshe Shelley, Grizedale Forest, and Using Instagram Without Losing Your Soul

Episode 13 – When the Map Runs Out of Ink What happens when human ambition meets a force that simply doesn't care? In this episode, we explore one of poetry's most electrifying themes: the tension between the world we impose upon the earth and the raw, indifferent power that quietly reclaims it. We begin in the Alps. Our guest poem is Percy Bysshe Shelley's monumental 'Mont Blanc,' written in 1816 after a visit to the Chamonix valley. It is a poem about awe, terror, and the sublime — about standing before a geological force so vast and so ancient that human endeavour shrinks to nothing. Shelley's ravine doesn't merely inspire; it obliterates. We'll read the poem in full and explore why it remains one of the most powerful meditations on nature ever written. From the Alps, we travel to Cumbria. My own poem, 'Grizedale Forest,' takes you into a February plantation — a regimented landscape of Sitka spruce planted in rows for the saw, where glacial water still scours the ancient rock and the forest's famous sculptures slowly surrender to moss, bracket fungus, and rot. It is a poem about entropy, exposure, and the moment you break out of the managed dark onto the bone-white granite height. Then, in our discussion segment, we ask a question that every poet sharing work online will recognise: how do you plant something wild inside a digital grid? We talk honestly about using Instagram to promote poetry books — not with a checklist of tips, but with a genuine examination of what it means to bring texture, atmosphere, and authenticity into a space built for speed and distraction. This episode is for anyone who has ever stood on a hillside and felt, briefly, beautifully insignificant. Cumbria In Verse – Lakes To Fells In Poetry is available now.