Term: 2024
Explore all pages categorised under the heading 2024 below.
All categories can be seen on the main index page.
Adaptations
The only way I could leave California was to trick myself with a promise to return. I made my vow in Tuolumne Meadows, part of Yosemite...
A Palm Tree Untrimmed
“Your neighbour is in clear violation,” the City Inspector says, snapping a photo of Arlo’s tree on the other side of the fence. “A palm...
Death by Fox, Cow or River? Suburbanite in the Yorkshire Countryside
Who’s there? From my house’s mustardy Picasso face, I peer sleepily in the morning through one of its offset eyes. I’m trying to motivate myself...
Then
I When the fires sweep the floor lick the crumbs gorge the feast. When the ribs jut stark skeletal, a scaffolding of scorched tree spines...
How to Make Love to Fire
My wife will see the fire first. Or so she claims, whilst unfolding the picnic and arranging the cheese sandwiches and soft-boiled eggs. She asks...
In Conversation with Arturo Rodríguez
Being in front of a volcanic eruption, from the perspective of someone who hasn’t been there, might seem like standing on an alien planet. But,...
Sachunterricht
Growing up on two acres next to a lake in upstate New York, I spent many hours outside. Pretending there was quicksand in the reeds,...
A World Burning with Life: On Zoe Schlanger’s The Light Eaters
Back in the 1970s, a book called The Secret Life of Plants exploded onto The NY Times bestseller list, and ironically, set the field of...
Under A Blood Red Sun
Outside, an injured, blood-red sun. You’ve never seen anything like it. You’ve never smelled this smell before: earth on fire. You stand on the narrow...
Buongiorno
“I’m betting airport security is looking through your things,” says my host Ursula over our Italian breakfast, a sugary pastry and full-strength coffee, on her...
Under Your Flaming Shirt
You too might have done this. No, you, of all people, my friend, must have. I say that not just because I relish the security...
Pilgrim's Fire
As I walk farther up Woodenshoe Canyon its walls grow closer together and more sinuous. The floor of the canyon is mostly sand, and the...
Cold Hearths
This is a remote part of the Scottish highlands — an abandoned township two miles from the nearest scrap of civilisation, a seldom-used road. It’s...
Understory
A forest floor self portrait I retreat in primordial wet and slide out with the sun. Of makings and markings and moments of mercy how...
Tropical Delight
Do you remember the night she danced in a red pa’u skirt with a silver clip of starlight in her black hair? Torch Gingers kindled the sky; into...
the evening
the evening, ornamental nightfall a thing of remarkable fire
Self-Portrait Gestalt
shamanwoman poetturtle greenvagabond riverlakeoceanheart If she does not swirl into fire, she will be your friendloversoul
Retrospect
Keep your heart good and forgive me, I did not know where I was. Sometimes there’s just no cliff or landmark of danger. Sometimes you bow before...
Postcards from the Mouth of the Inferno
Months after the last spark is stomped out Lennon and I drive up the Poudre Canyon amidst the stretches of scar tissue. This is what...
Pine Barrens
A June wildfire bruises the sky: 12,000 acres of pines choke and I stand in the drive catching specks of ash in my palm. We...
Pastoral
I say watch the birds flicker, when the sun begins to ease over the horizon. And you say, look at the reflection of pines, over...
Passages
The night, a thicket. The sailors lean their mast Towards the flames that ring the mountain. A leopard’s glowing spots, a celestial map, A trail...
Exploding into a Fantastic Geography
a crossroads is a place you can’t help but come to and can’t help but leave from where Papa Legba sets up his diasporic shop a man could...
Embroidering Maps of Return
In a still solitary, now toilet-less cell, but with real pacing room, the relative freedom facilitates clearer thinking. My mind is on fire
Before the Fire Dies
the shore of Van Auken Lake is everything but quiet. our voices melt together in the crackle & gathered buzz
Tavares Strachan: There is a Light Somewhere
Tavares Strachan’s There is a Light Somewhere show at the Hayward finished at the end of September. It was a stunning show exhibiting the Bahamian’s...
Silk Roads: British Museum
This magnificent exhibition celebrates and expands the concept of the ‘Silk Road’. The derivation of the Silk Road began in the 18th century reflecting on...
Mike Kelley: Ghost and Spirit
This exhaustive survey of Mike Kelley (1954-2021) is frightening, intriguing, loud, funny and very American. It’s packed with his sculptures, videos, models, photographs, and multi-disciplinary...
Hew Locke: what have we here?
‘This is like walking round my head, there is no direct route, choose your own route’, says Hew Locke after two years of collaboration, delving...
Walking to Pho in Hanoi
The unassuming pho shop in question sits just down the road, about 150 paces from my Hanoi apartment. I walk up my green-canopied alley and...
Kre-mas-i
On my way back from Sidemen to Canggu, the traffic barely moved. Otherwise empty rural roadsides were packed, bike to bike, bumper to bumper. I...
Pepper
My hand gently cradles a chocolate habanero, I smile remembering the time you thought the name meant it was sweet. Your face flushed as your...
Touristed
“Professor Wen Ming, Professor Wen Ming!” He looked back, the key to his office door pausing mid-rotation. Lin, the department secretary, waved at him from...
Permeation
There are many moves with unlimited manoeuvres in chess. Before the opening gambit, it was known to us – Paula and me. Despite this, as...
What I Thought I Had
My father’s property sat at the end of the newly cut Dream Farm Road—a steep rutted track through uncut forest, bordered by the Point Reyes...
I Walk in the Dark Because the British AI Lady Told Me So
The bug-eyed black goldfish, Sukoshi (which means “little-bit” in Japanese) wiggles his pretty lacy tail goodbye as I sneak out the front door of my...
Kamata: A Place for Dumplings in a Laundromat
In Japan, Mr. Shirota is a famous bluegrass banjo player. Yes, I will be picking up several of his CDs to bring back to Eastern...
Smouldering
Zain squinted his eyes. The temperature was in the high nineties. The sky was clear but the air felt humid. He was short of breath,...
On Parties Gone Wrong
Our world was shaped by WWII. The conflict, which spanned the globe, and the order that came after it, shaped the way we now think...
Appalachian Fire: Activism in Demon Copperhead
Demon Copperhead is on fire. And he’d rather die than let that flame go out. From the moment he arrives – blue and cold and...
The Autumn Light that Still Sears through You, Long after It is Gone
Soon after he learned he was dying, my father told me he loved autumn light, so I kept sending photos: yellow aspens glowing in dark...
Burning Love
Nargis was a hugger. She gravitated towards my mother, nestling within the warmth of her arms. Her father, my uncle, drowned his evenings in whiskey,...
Fingers Stretched Out Towards The Sun
In Green Unpleasant Land: Creative Responses to Rural England’s Colonial Connections (2020), postcolonial literary scholar Corinne Fowler named Louisa Adjoa Parker along with other writers...
Issue 13: Fire
Welcome to Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature’s 13th edition, on the theme of ‘fire.’ Fire: /ˈfʌɪə/ origin: Old English fȳr (noun), fȳrian...
Issue 13 Fire: Contributors
See all contributors to the Fire issue inc. acclaimed photographer Arturo Rodríguez, Louisa Adjoa Parker, Alton Melvar M. Dapanas, Yoko Nogami, Sara Shah, and more.
Edinburgh
Edinburgh feels like a moody melancholic gentleman filled with more talent than he can use. And when the sun shines, you feel like the only...
How to Survive the Streets as a Girl in the Old Medina
You’re having a good hair day (unusual, I know!). It’s rarely necessary to plough the stork nest with a comb, yet today your mane is...
My Shadows and I
My sculptural and digital images are a reflection of my past and present, projecting my life stories across a range of urbanscapes. I call them...
Nights in the Suburb
Two years ago I moved to a new community in a very remote suburb, which blends in with the surrounding rural areas forming a unique...
Movement
“Murakami kind of ruined writing about jazz for everyone else,” said a friend, well, a boss really, but he feels like a friend. I’ll try....
Mirror Hours in Kathmandu
9:11 am. There it is again, on my phone and out of place. This time I am in Namo Buddha, a pilgrimage site way above...
Green Walls Lit in the Night
At the point when part of me knew our relationship would be over soon, we were living in a country governed by its military. We...
To the Señora on the First Floor
You are the oldest señora in our building. I first noticed you during the earthquake that took place three months after I arrived in Mexico...
Remember, Breathe
1. Decide to study abroad in Scotland for four months. When your family takes to the airport, you’re shaking. Almost turn back. Almost give up....
My Wilderness Refuge in the City
For many years I’ve lived on a bluff with a wilderness in my backyard. However, I don’t live in some remote area but in Anchorage,...
L.A. Cinemas: The City’s Real Houses of Worship
You’re here, and it’s a party but you feel like you’re stepping into a cathedral, and the crowded bar glows like an altar. L.A. worships...
Flipbook Corn
Outside the window an endless ocean of tall green cornstalks stretched for miles alongside the highway. The perfectly aligned rows at 70 miles per hour...
Departure Point
Every river seems to have a place like this; somewhere small boats go to die. The rotting fibreglass carcasses of forgotten pleasure craft and Sunday...
A Perpetual Chameleon Dance
The Tate Modern, the National Portrait Gallery, the Natural History Museum, the fabulous Victoria and Albert… all of them fabulous, and within walking distance. But...
This Car-Centric City Makes Me Dream Of Third Places
the dream: – there is a café: — Its façade: a verdant ivy waterfall calling souls to seek solace from the urban hustle welcomes humans...
The City
I aborted one, then another. Legs splayed to a darkened sky, the city is hollow, cavernous, a mother buried with dead-born child. I popped a...
Philadelphia: A Ghazal
I never noticed a sound in my childhood room in Philadelphia, not the horn-blaring, teenage screaming, razzle-dazzle nighttime streets of Philadelphia. I slept deeply in...
Nungua & The Ritual of Rain
at the end of it there is this thing—words; we share them like sticks of smoke, our lips black with abandon for writs and tales...
Mexico City
For lunch ant eggs with worms. 900 pesos, though … Only the rich can afford such courage.
Lahaina Noon
They say there were no shadows at the height of that afternoon. Constricted to a single point, we were isolated, no secondary bodies.
Hamlet's Mirror
While gold and dollars pile up in banks and smoke from gunpowder spirals in the air, I stand, outfitted, in the village church before I...
Free Radicals
1. Amid roaring trucks, giraffe-neck cranes, all-day hammering, bicycle lanes, curbside cafés where waiters pour wine and teenagers hunch over takeout, a hoarse screech.
City of Incense
a slow haze rolls over any answers to prayers the stars sent — their light too long ago to reach still, the cathedral’s candle votives...
After Math
i. What’s Left Cracked bricks, fixtures, fencing, Hooks & some wire, torn corners of insulation stapled to Warped wood. Ash. Porcelain tiles spilt like playing...
Without Rhyme of Reason
“Everything there looked foreign,” you said. That must have been in one of our early conversations though not the earliest. You were talking about your...
Cut Through: Graves and Cats through a Samurai trail
From a distance, the houses encrusting the hills of the Kotsubo neighbourhood remind me of barnacles. They crowd together, layer upon layer, hiding the surface...
In Company With Spiders
Most of the spiders living in the house that I share with my husband and our terrier are the small-bodied, long-legged variety. They station themselves...
What Would He Have Said?
To Pay Our Respects. As we stand at the gates of the Mauthausen concentration camp, more than at any other time previously, I feel acutely...
The Goat in the Stairwell
The commotion outside our apartment highlighted the quiet within. Unspoken words poked at the cracks in our marriage, picking them apart, unravelling their edges. They...
Symphony of the Train
1. linden. 2. central. 3. noyes. 4. foster. 5. davis. 6. howard. 7. waiting on the platform. 8. granville. 9. cermak-chinatown. 10. swiping out.
Spiritual Identity
I am neither the mind, nor the intellect, memory, nor ego. Nor am I ears, nor tongue. I am not the nose, nor eyes, nor...
In the Hall of Forbidding Signage
The Hall of Forbidding Signage, an exhibit in the Museum of Urban Life, was a memorial of warning plaques, notices, and placards, screwed on every...
The Woman Who Marries
The buildings had grown fangs, the street lamps whiskers. Billboards flocked to the skyline, pecked at star-scatter. Town cars beaked their way between gnarled claws...
A Dark Night
Night falls softly upon the land, warm and comforting like a childhood blanket, wrapping around her with an array of celestial freckles. The shade of...
With Grace
They’d gone on much longer than she’d expected them to. A quick bite had turned to two courses, a drink had turned to five, and...
Fishkids
This is the furthest I’ve ever been from the centre of Leicester. I was born there and haven’t moved since. We all know about the...
The Hungarian Vegetarian
I’m not sure if my father was joking when he told me over the phone that my grandmother would be turning in her grave if...
Pastizzi
I am twenty years old and have just eaten what I think is the most perfect pastry in the world. But I think I’m in...
Dry Land Fishing
A couple carrying rough bags are walking down the railroad tracks in front of my house in Jeremiah, Kentucky. Thin and young, they are dressed...
In Search of a Lost Japantown
Welcome to Tacoma, Washington, USA, my adopted hometown. Tacoma is the third-largest city in Washington State, after our “big sister” city that gets all the...
Srinagar: Occupation by Day & Night
I arrive on a domestic flight from Delhi to Srinagar during Ramadan in 2018, registering as a foreigner three times, palms sweating and grateful that...
Marrakech’s Medina: “A Simple Path of Reading”
When I travelled to Marrakech a year ago, I never imagined that I would return. Yet, back in New York City, something about the Marrakshi...
Berkeley to Berkeley via Bombay
My father’s white hair frames his cocoa-coloured face. The rest of his frail body is hidden by the blankets except for the arm with the...
Dreaming in Diaspora
I have always been a dream collector–someone who pays attention to dreams, writes them down, looks them up, and tries to interpret their messages. When...
Food Shopping in Rome
In the US, naturally, I drove to the supermarket. The route led down a pot-holed avenue walled with office buildings. I loaded a cart with...
Just Breathe
Feet dragging from the elevator, I punch in the pin to my front door, ready to escape the heat and humidity of my three-minute walk...
Cemetery Conversations with My Dead Dad
In 2019, I returned to London for the first time since 1990. I remembered the city vividly, both because I’d looked at the photos countless...
Mission Dolores Park: A Map Oneirica
My right fibula hurts when I walk as a Boricua in San Francisco, dreaming of the home I left. Nobody knows my name here, nor...
African Venice: Explore the African Presence in Venice through 10 Walks
Decolonising Travel Senior Editor Faith Adiele sat down with Shaul Bassi, Italian co-author of African Venice: A Guide to Art, Culture and People, the first...
The Cheesemaker's Daughter
When I heard that Kristin Vuković was publishing a novel about a family of cheesemakers, and that the story had an international backdrop connected to...
A Haunting of Memory
The tandem release of Faith Adiele’s two new books, Voice/Over and Her Voice, create a hand-in-hand hybrid memoir in two different forms. Her Voice is...
What Makes A Place Home
Marina Maržić’s life is in disarray. She is in her native Croatia, uncertain about returning to the marriage, job, and life she abruptly left behind...
Dreams of Lost Buttresses
Night after night, a young climber dreams of a singular buttress, lit gold by sun, on the vanishing point of the horizon. Each time she...
Yellow on Yellow
In her wide-open sanctuary a female sun moth’s yellow patches are hard to spot as she lies against grasses allowed to fend for themselves in...
The Great Falafel War of Egypt
My time in Egypt through the auspices of the Fulbright-Hays Seminars Abroad allowed for many smaller-scale experiences that augmented the wonderful lectures and visits to...
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