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Robert Macfarlane Profile picture
Robert Macfarlane
@RobGMacfarlane
Books: Is A River Alive? (1 May 2025) | Underland | The Lost Words | The Old Ways etc … | Films: River, Mountain | Nature, climate, people | Prof @Cambridge_uni
6 subscribers
Dec 9, 2023 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
A short🧵on prose-poetry:
This is a page from proofs of JA Baker's The Peregrine (1967), marked up by Baker himself.
It's an extraordinary self-analysis.
He marks & counts stressed (\) & unstressed (u) syllables: 57.8% stressed!
He tallies metaphors, similes & verbs: 15.7% verbs! Image Studying the data Baker provides helps us understand what lies under the bonnet, as it were, of the 'magnesium-flare intensity' of his famously dynamic prose.
On this page, the count is 20 metaphors vs 2 similes; metaphor's explosive energy-release vs simile's hinged joints. Image
Oct 20, 2022 • 11 tweets • 8 min read
Hello -- some news!
I've adapted Susan Cooper's cult-classic novel, The Dark Is Rising, for a 12-part audio drama/podcast on @bbcworldservice.
Dir. & co-adapted by @SimonMcBurney.
Starring Toby Jones, Harriet Walter.
Music by @JohnnyFlynnHQ & more.
#TheDarkIsRising
Brief 🧵 Image The Dark Is Rising is straight up the eeriest novel I know. I first read it when I was 13, & it gripped me then -- as it's gripped millions of people around the world since it was first published in 1973...
economist.com/1843/2014/08/0… Image
Oct 6, 2022 • 24 tweets • 19 min read
Hello -- 5 years ago today, a book called The Lost Words by me & @JackieMorrisArt was published.

Here we are, nervous & young(er), on that day.

In our wildest dreams we couldn't have guessed what the planting of that acorn would cause to flourish.

Thread...🧵🪡 ImageImageImage The Lost Words was created in response to the removal from a widely used children's dictionary of everyday nature words, from "Acorn" to "Wren" by way of "Bluebell", "Otter" & "Kingfisher"––& their replacement with tech words inc. "Broadband" & "Chatroom".
theguardian.com/books/2017/oct…
Dec 26, 2020 • 9 tweets • 5 min read
Barry Lopez passed away yesterday evening, making his last great journey.
His work –– graceful, meticulous, ethical, compassionate, from Arctic Dreams to Common Ground to Horizon & far beyond –– shaped & will go on to shape countless lives, hearts & landscapes...
1/9 Barry knew that no landscape speaks with a single voice; that place is always polyglot.
His writing recognised this, speaking w/ the energy & variety of a braided river, picking new courses & channels through archaeology, geology, oral history & natural history...
2/9
Apr 11, 2020 • 14 tweets • 8 min read
I want to end our #CoReadingVirus journey together by gathering & celebrating some of the creative work that's arisen in response to Nan's work/the Cairngorms. Please do add to this thread with anything you think relevant, including your own writing, art, music! Here goes... ...there's @Jenny_Sturgeon's forthcoming album The Living Mountain, inspired by Nan's work, out in autumn this year: Jenny's put two *beautiful* tracks (recorded in the Cairngorms) up for the group to listen to here (one arising from the 'Man' chapter)...
soundcloud.com/hudsonrecords/…
Apr 6, 2020 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
Lastly for this evening, my now-traditional enquiry as to which phrases, images & sentences you found most resonant & why? These chapters are, to my mind, absolute treasure-houses in terms of one-liners:
"Life, it seems, won't be warned off."
"I like the unpath best"
... "Knowledge does not dispel mystery"
"You wait, & soon the birds forget you"
I could go on & on. But I'd rather hear from you, of course. Meanwhile, if you'll forgive the indulgence, here's me & my younger brother on the plateau, back in the days of cagoules.
As for next time...
Mar 22, 2020 • 14 tweets • 6 min read
The Nan Shepherd/The Living Mountain #CoReadingVirus Book Group: as promised, some Sunday thoughts about how it might work. If you're new to the plan, the tweet below should help explain the idea; do join us!
Otherwise & anyway, read on & RT.
[Thread...]
...People around the world are getting hold of copies of Nan's wonderful book, written in a time of world crisis (1940s). They're buying them, borrowing them, being given them by strangers (see tweet below if you want to give or be given a copy)...
Mar 17, 2020 • 12 tweets • 5 min read
So: I propose that we take Nan Shepherd's slender masterpiece The Living Mountain as the first book in the #CoReadingVirus global Twitter Reading Group. It's a beautiful, moving, wise meditation on landscape, love, nature & the nature of being.
(thread)
Shepherd wrote her book in the 1940s at a time of world crisis; it was published in 1977, near the end of her long life. It tells the story of her "traffic of love" with the Cairngorm Mountains of north-east Scotland, and of how she learned to walk "into" this landscape...
Jul 29, 2019 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
Recently in my 'Words of the Day' I've been building up a basic ID guide to some of the flowers & plants of wayside & verge; their appearance, names, lore etc. I thought I'd gather them all together in a thread; please do add your own species & photos to help build it. Here goes. The splendidly spiky Teasel, with its lavender "halos" of blossom.
Jul 6, 2018 • 12 tweets • 7 min read
On Monday 9 July at 9am, a global Twitter reading group of WG Sebald's great & haunting book, The Rings of Saturn, begins here - running until 2 August. Join us!
Hashtags will be #TheReadingsofSaturn & #TRoS.
A brief thread follows about how the reading group will work. Each day or two at 9am, I'll post questions or reflections about the book; its style, landscapes, strange form, found photographs, histories, ethics; about its many influences & legacies; about pilgrimage, atrocity, analogy, nature, moths, stars, exile & memory's patterns...
Apr 2, 2018 • 17 tweets • 14 min read
For #InternationalChildrensBookDay, I want to tell a story about generosity & hope, about childhood & the natural world, and about some remarkable acts of everyday kindness. I want to tell it by way of heartfelt thanks. The story begins with a charm of goldfinches... ...which were painted by @JackieMorrisArt onto & into our The Lost Words: A Spell Book. The Lost Words took 20 common nature words – from acorn to wren – that had fallen, due to lack of use, out of a well-known children's dictionary & sought to conjure them back into being. We...