Solomon:Terror and Terroir

‘Solomon’ is a new work of short fiction, set in the United Kingdom and northern Uganda. It explores themes of memory, violence and recovery through the consciousness of a young Ugandan man. The accompanying essay ‘“Solomon”: Terror and Terroir’ reflects upon the genesis and writing of the story in the context of Terroir, a new book-length collection of fiction, with emphasis on depictions of violence and the relationship between the notion of terroir and human psychology

Field Recordings

A 'found' poem built from abstracts submitted for a Poetry in Public Spaces colloquium at Lancaster University. The submission constitutes a sound recording and the text of the poem plus an essay reflecting on its composition and ideas about installation in public space

Poems

THE SWALLOWS RETURN TO SARAJEVO, AFTER \u27DESERT STORM\u27, DANDELION

Taking Liberties:Ideals of freedom in contemporary South Africa: a practice-based approach to research with multilingual writing communities.

Taking Liberties Abstract This paper will focus on a Leverhulme Foundation-funded research project, Taking Liberties, which took place at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa, from January to May 2018. The paper will trace some antecedents for this multilingual Creative Writing project, drawing out methodological practices that informed its design and implementation. It will trace the engagement with students at the University of the Western Cape in the context of historical and contemporary political conditions. Outputs from the project will be featured and discussed in terms of text and performance. Links will be provided to web-based outputs to create an interactive dimension. My discussion of the project will reflect upon the nature of practice-based research in Creative Writing and the wider implications for the discipline and its inter-disciplinary capacity

Aphasia

Poem sequence relating to colony collapse in bee

Whitethorn

A short story exploring issues of guilt and responsibility set on North Lancashire and following the return of a musician to his native village

Emporium

Short story written in free indirect style, set in provincial market town in which the central character confronts what is enduring and what is transient through an encounter in an antique shop. In this short story, a man drifts into a bric-a-brac shop in a rural town to find the past confronting him. He is snared into a lie about his dead wife that haunts the story with images of the past and with actions that draw him deeper into an unintended act of deception

The Rac-FRET mouse reveals tight spatiotemporal control of Rac activity in primary cells and tissues

The small G protein family Rac has numerous regulators that integrate extracellular signals into tight spatiotemporal maps of its activity to promote specific cell morphologies and responses. Here, we have generated a mouse strain, Rac-FRET, which ubiquitously expresses the Raichu-Rac biosensor. It enables FRET imaging and quantification of Rac activity in live tissues and primary cells without affecting cell properties and responses. We assessed Rac activity in chemotaxing Rac-FRET neutrophils and found enrichment in leading-edge protrusions and unexpected longitudinal shifts and oscillations during protruding and stalling phases of migration. We monitored Rac activity in normal or disease states of intestinal, liver, mammary, pancreatic, and skin tissue, in response to stimulation or inhibition and upon genetic manipulation of upstream regulators, revealing unexpected insights into Rac signaling during disease development. The Rac-FRET strain is a resource that promises to fundamentally advance our understanding of Rac-dependent responses in primary cells and native environments

Bedrock erosion by root fracture and tree throw: A coupled biogeomorphic model to explore the humped soil production function and the persistence of hillslope soils

In 1877, G. K. Gilbert reasoned that bedrock erosion is maximized under an intermediate soil thickness and declines as soils become thinner or thicker. Subsequent analyses of this “humped” functional relationship proposed that thin soils are unstable and that perturbations in soil thickness would lead to runaway thinning or thickening of the soil. To explore this issue, we developed a numerical model that simulates the physical weathering of bedrock by root fracture and tree throw. The coupled biogeomorphic model combines data on conifer population dynamics, rootwad volumes, tree throw frequency, and soil creep from the Pacific Northwest (USA). Although not hardwired into the model, a humped relationship emerges between bedrock erosion and soil thickness. The magnitudes of the predicted bedrock erosion rates and their functional dependency on soil thickness are consistent with independent field measurements from a coniferous landscape in the region. Imposed perturbations of soil erosion during model runs demonstrate that where bedrock weathering is episodic and localized, hillslope soils do not exhibit runaway thinning or thickening. The pit-and-mound topography created by tree throw produces an uneven distribution of soil thicknesses across a hillslope; thus, although episodes of increased erosion can lead to temporary soil thinning and even the exposure of bedrock patches, local areas of thick soils remain. These soil patches provide habitat for trees and serve as nucleation points for renewed bedrock erosion and soil production. Model results also suggest that where tree throw is a dominant weathering process, the initial mantling of bedrock is not only a vertical process but also a lateral process: soil mounds created by tree throw flatten over time, spreading soil over bedrock surfaces