The Slough of Despond

Hello!

It feels strange to resurrect this substack with some shameless self-promotion but I have written an essay called The Slough of Despond that has been published by Guillemot Press. It was part of the Speculative Nature Writing competition that was run by the University of East Anglia and the Willowherb Review. And there are two really excellent essays from Nushelle de Silva and Praha R that you can purchase here.

Here is a little excerpt from my essay:

“In John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, the ‘Slough of Despond’ is a marshy bog, over time the phrase has come to mean a state of extreme depression. It is strange, sharing the name of your hometown with an idiom that is used to denote depression and despair. Growing up in Slough, Bunyan’s bog became a parental shorthand. Whenever I felt low, my father would ask, ‘Are you in the Slough of Despond?’ and I would laugh and say ‘yes’ because according to my emotional state and apparently my postcode, I was. This exchange grounded me in my physical surroundings and lifted me out of my thoughts. Every time,  I thought of how beautiful I found Slough.”

Also, if you are in Exeter, there is a launch for the pamphlets on the 31st of January where Jessica J Lee and Jos Smith will be talking about the project and I’ll give a reading and take part in a discussion. It is free and tickets are available here. Hopefully see you there!