Stranger in the Mask of a Deer

By Richard Skelton

Stranger in the Mask of a Deer conjures an elemental, dreamlike narrative ranging from the present to the Late-Upper Palaeolithic, when the British peninsula was gradually reoccupied by humans and animals returning from the greater continent after the Ice Age.

Richard Skelton began this book-length poem many years ago with the intention of exploring the history of Britain's landscape, only for the text to transform into a kind of literary seance, involving both human and other-than-human voices. Its transforming power lies in the accumulative magic of the word as ritual. Skelton's is a mesmeric lyric, probing the edges of consciousness towards a place where 'there are always presences / always inherences / things beyond sight.'
'An incredibly moving, essential meditation on where we have come from, where we are, and where we are headed.'
Kerri ní Dochartaigh

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penned in the Margins
• Release date: Jun 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9781913850043

Richard Skelton

Richard Skelton is a writer, musician and publisher from Lancashire in northern England. His work is deeply focused on landscape and our relationship with the natural world. Between 2005 and 2011 he ran the acclaimed Sustain-Release private press, publishing beautifully packaged albums of music under a variety of pseudonyms. His albums include Marking Time (2008), Verse of Birds (2012), Towards a Frontier (2017), and Border Ballads (2019). His books include Landings (2009), Limnology (2012), Beyond the Fell Wall (2015) and Dark Hollow Dark (2019). His novella The Look Away was longlisted for the 2019 Portico Prize. For the past decade he has run Corbel Stone Press, one of the foremost UK small presses dedicated to landscape and nature, with the Canadian poet Autumn Richardson. He also runs the Centre for Alterity Studies.

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STRANGER IN THE MASK OF A DEER

Richard Skelton is a British artist. His work focuses on landscape and other-than-human studies. Between 2005 and 2011 he ran Sustain-Release, a private press music label dedicated to publishing his own landscape-oriented recordings. Since 2009 he has been co-director of the multi-media publishing house Corbel Stone Press, with the Canadian poet Autumn Richardson. Together they curate the biannual journal of eco-poetics and esoteric literature, Reliquiae. He is also founding member of the Notional Research Group for Cultural Artefacts and director of the Centre for Alterity Studies.

richardskelton.net

ALSO BY RICHARD SKELTON

Landings (2009)

Moor Glisk (2012)

Limnology (2012)

Beyond the Fell Wall (2015)

The Pale Ladder (2016)

The Look Away (2018)

Dark Hollow Dark (2019)

And Then Gone (2020)

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PUBLISHED BY PENNED IN THE MARGINS

Toynbee Studios, 28 Commercial Street, London E1 6AB

www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk

All rights reserved

© Richard Skelton 2021

The right of Richard Skelton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988.

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Penned in the Margins.

First published 2021

Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ International

ISBN

ePub 978-1-913850-04-3

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

CONTENTS

foreword

begin

dark

cast

dream

wake

it

before

sorrow

stranger

land

teacher

cave

story

flight

hunt

echo

mark

again

afterword

NOTES

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

for my mother

for my father

Stranger in the Mask of a Deer

FOREWORD

that this line appears new & complete & full formed & clear

& perfectly distinct is an illusion a lie a betrayal a trick of

the light that it has been cast down & broken & gathered &

mended is nearer the truth that it is an arbitrary juncture in

the process of endless reassembly is as good a definition as

any as good bad indifferent as any

BEGIN

where do i begin

father

grandfather

ancestor

begin here

four & a half decades ago

the bones cast

a name given

yours

this body

this clot of muscles & blood

skin & nerves

but surely there were other forms

other faces of the dice

how far can you cast your mind back

as far as that hill ridge

or the next

begin with cold

a burning cold

tell me where the cold lives

north of here

the far back of hills

nival rivers

cryotic soils

& what is it

this cold

it comes & it goes

a huge white animal

an unceasing hunger

a quenchless thirst

but surely there