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Caught by the River

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Peat on Earth

Caught by the River ·

2025/08/09

Peat on Earth is a series of ten spoken-word films produced between the UK and Malaysia, aiming to inspire enthusiasm about peatland habitats. Peatland habitats get a bad rap. They are often thought of as wastelands. We talk about being “swamped” or “bogged down”. But peat bogs are vital, biodiverse landscapes. Far from being lifeless […]

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The Parallel Path: Jenn Ashworth, interviewed

Caught by the River ·

2025/08/07

Recently published by Sceptre, Jenn Ashworth‘s ‘The Parallel Path: Love, Grit and Walking the North’ is Book of the Month for August. Here, the author speaks to Karen Lloyd about anti-heroics, tethered beetles, and walking with Wainwright and Wordsworth breathing down her neck. Jenn Ashworth, photographed by Lasma Poisa The Parallel Path begins as a […]

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Competition Results

Caught by the River ·

2025/08/06

Here are the results of our latest newsletter competition… Last week, we had a copy of Michelle Werrett’s Song of the Streams to give away. We asked: What is the name of Exmoor’s largest river? And the answer is: the Exe. The winner is Chris Coomer. Your book should be with you very soon! Thanks […]

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All Teasing is Mutual: On ‘Teasels’ by Sam Francis

Caught by the River ·

2025/08/06

Like the plants that give the pamphlet its name, Sam Francis’s ‘Teasels’ is impossible not to get snagged on, writes Emily Hasler. Photos: Emily Hasler I shall be your witness. Gathering clues about you like a hybrid, a private detective, a scientist, a lover. I am your beholder, your gaper, your gazer. Your plucker, your […]

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Now Playing

Caught by the River ·

2025/08/05

‘Patron Saint Of Elsewhere’ by Sewell & The Gong – the title track from their first long-player, out now on Disappear. Patron Saint Of Elsewhere by Sewell & The Gong Artist, illustrator and bestselling author Matt Sewell is an avid ornithologist. He also plays the guitar in Sewell & the Gong, a music project with […]

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Four Minutes and Thirty-Three Seconds

Caught by the River ·

2025/08/03

In an extract from his recently published book ‘Throwing Feathers in the Wind’, Richard Gorodecky extols the transformative, transportive virtues of casting a line. Illustration by Luey Graves In 1952, the experimental composer John Cage composed 4’33” (pronounced ‘four minutes and thirty-three seconds’). It was performed for the first time on the 29th of August […]

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Deposition from the Verge

Caught by the River ·

2025/08/02

Escaping a car with a popped tyre, Sally McEnallay connects with the unseen ecology of the edgelands. Margins are easy to ignore because they are places where nothing seems to happen. A motorway verge seen through a car window is a blurred, weedy strip that separates six lanes of traffic from farmland, new housing estates […]

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Competition Results

Caught by the River ·

2025/07/31

Here are the results of our latest newsletter competition… Last week, we had a copy of Sam Francis’s Teasels to give away, courtesy of Hazel Press. We asked: To which genus do teasels belong? And the answer is: Dipsacus. The winner is Steve Smith. Your book should be with you soon! Thanks for all the […]

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Unfurling: July

Caught by the River ·

2025/07/31

Should you ever need protection from mer-folk or freshwater sirens, just look to the ferns on the riverbank, advises Pip Squire. Be it on isolated moorland, suburban roadsides, or in crevices high on inner-city walls, ferns proliferate in a wide range of environments. On Dartmoor, it’s not unusual to find all kinds of fern in […]

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To see your wildness

Caught by the River ·

2025/07/30

In the summer of 2023, Sam Francis began keeping a diary about the teasels growing in her garden, closely observing their growth from seedling to maturity and then senescence. The result was a deeply considered and moving testament to the entanglement of plants, people and environment, now published by Hazel Press. Find an extract below. […]

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Peckerwood: Field notes from a feral’d garden

Caught by the River ·

2025/07/29

Butterflies glow, flit, skank and chase through Mark Mattock‘s “feral’d” NW2 garden. June, July ‘Youre tale anoyeth al this compaignye. Swich talkyng is nat worth a boterflye’ ― Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales A tiny delta-winged moth on the other side of kitchen window stares in at me from the unknown darkness beyond it, accusingly, […]

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Lovely empty windows

Caught by the River ·

2025/07/27

Laura Parker tells the story of a 1928 lifeboat tragedy, as memorialised in the windows of an East Sussex church. In brilliant cobalt, amethyst and jade, a dragon writhes beneath a solemn angel. God’s armour-clad messenger stands upright on the beast’s coils, a pointed staff in his right hand, a chain in his left. As he […]

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Flaxen

Caught by the River ·

2025/07/25

Open until 31st August, Flaxen is an exhibition that showcases the artwork of Alice Fox, made with materials collected and grown at ancient Cornish farmstead Kestle Barton over the last two years. Alice Fox, Flax Patch (weave detail). Photo credit David Lindsay. Courtesy Kestle Barton During the growing season of 2024 a crop of flax […]

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Competition Results

Caught by the River ·

2025/07/24

Here are the results of our latest newsletter competition… Last week, we had a copy of Vanessa Kisuule’s Neverland: The Pleasures and Perils of Fandom to give away. We asked: Garnering hundreds of thousands of views online and now widely taught in universities and schools, what is the name of Vanessa’s poem on the historic toppling of […]

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The Benefactors

Caught by the River ·

2025/07/24

Recently published by Hodder & Stoughton, Wendy Erskine’s ‘The Benefactors’ is full of voices that represent the power of small-scale, everyday connection, writes Emma Warren. Wendy Erskine’s first novel explores the aftermath of an assault, tracking the shock waves as they hit and then continue echoing through people’s lives. It’s not your average book. And […]

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Now Playing

Caught by the River ·

2025/07/22

‘Tender of Land’ by M. Sage. Taken from the album Tender / Wading, out on RVNG Intl. in September. The record finds Matthew Sage, aka M. Sage, in the foothills and pastures of Colorado, writing, recording, and returning to a patch of his homeland and identity.

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Usk – A Haiku Sequence

Caught by the River ·

2025/07/20

Paul Chambers introduces a sequence of haiku that follow the River Usk from upland bog to tidal estuary, and through the cycle of the seasons. These haiku are drawn from a longer work-in-progress exploring the River Usk, and the environments through which it flows, across a full seasonal cycle. Haiku’s precision and attentiveness to momentary detail […]

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The Caught by the River Book of the Month: July

Caught by the River ·

2025/07/19

Published by Faber, Lally MacBeth’s ‘The Lost Folk: From the Forgotten Past to the Emerging Future of Folk’ is our July Book of the Month. Sophie Parkes reviews, finding an attentive author who not only cares deeply about folk culture, but also the people who create it. The profile of folklore in the UK, and […]

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Call for Submissions: An Antidote to Indifference...

Caught by the River ·

2025/07/18

For the first time in almost 10 years, we’re putting together an issue of our irregular print mag An Antidote to Indifference, dedicated entirely to the count(r)y of Cornwall. And for the first time ever, alongside specially commissioned content from our contributors and friends, we’re opening it up to public submissions. We are looking for […]

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Competition Results

Caught by the River ·

2025/07/17

Here are the results of our latest newsletter competition… Last week, we had a copy of Travis Elborough’s Writers’ Journeys That Shaped Our World to give away. We asked: Which of the authors listed on the book’s cover is best known for their book about a sperm whale – once described by D. H. Lawrence as “the […]

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512 results