Callum will be discussing and reading from his book "The South Downs: Paths of the Dead", about his spirit-filled, magical walk of the lore-rich South Downs Way, just around the corner. He will also read more recent work commissioned as part of a fascinating project with the Pitt-Rivers Museum in Oxford exploring their collections of folk magic talismans, charms and amulets.
About Callum
Callum James is a poet, artist, bookseller and magical practitioner. His literary and artistic concerns are based in landscape, memory and magic: encounters with more-than-human persons are at the heart of this praxis. His perspective is queer and animist. His poetry has been widely published in national magazines.
Praise for “The South Downs: Paths of the Dead”
“Callum James has produced an exceptional work that tells of place and our relationship to it without the cliquey distancing art language of psychogeography that chokes so many other books. Refusing to dismiss the spirits of place summoned by walking, his words offer an alternative poetry of emotional punch and connection. This is a walking of the South Downs with mud on its boots, beauty entangling its soul and the shout of the dead in its ears.” - David Southwell
“We stack words as markers along paths; cairns of language that dissolve over time into mere place-names. In Paths of the Dead, Callum James takes one of the 'old roads' of southern England and attempts to build these mounds anew by walking a linguistic archaeology. In the tradition of Hamish Fulton, Tim Robinson and Peter Riley a web of cartographies - of birds and trees; fellow travelers both passing by and long dead; suburban detritus - are fashioned into a prose-poem landscape of grief, love and life.” - Justin Hopper