Latest news with #Dwell
The Guardian
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Poem of the week: Nest Box by Simon Armitage
Nest Box When the drunken old fool saw the barn owl, he swore blind it was an angel. 'Half-human, half-eagle,' he told someone in the town square. 'White flames in mid-air, a ghost with wings,' he crowed to the gathering crowd. 'A weird presence that materialised out of the heavens,' he said to the scrum of reporters before he keeled over. They searched the meadow and heath but found only pellets of small bones and teeth and skulls and part-digested fur and knotted hair. Which was strange, because when the young girl saw the angel she swore blind it was a barn owl, but when birdwatchers went to the copse and looked in the nest box they found tinselly silver threads and luminous turds and a warm meteorite and a few feathers made only of light. Nest Box is from Simon Armitage's Dwell, a slim hardback collection illustrated by the talented Cornish artist and printmaker, Beth Munro. The briefly titled poems, such as Drey, Den, Hibernaculum and Insect Hotel, focus on the safe places, natural or devised, inhabited by the wildlife of the restored Lost Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall. Eventually, we're told, the poems will be 'manifested physically at site-specific locations and in different guises' – as installations, treasure-trails, sculptures and so on. Dwell, therefore, is an illustrated print preview, an informal, engaging, often humorous short collection that will appeal to younger readers, and occasional readers, and sharpen every reader's ecological conscience. The Lost Gardens project, today and in its future planned restorations, has supreme ecological significance, as Dwell makes clear. It's a story with major historical-political dimensions, too, concerning class, regionalism, and the first world war. I'm already speculating, and hoping, that a full-length collection might emerge later from the poet laureate's heartfelt engagement with the 'Willow Garden' (as its Cornish name translates). It is rich material. While the poems in Dwell are simultaneously grounded and freely imaginative, Nest Box addresses more fundamental questions about what we define as real. It reminded me, on a first reading, of similar questions raised by one of my favourite children's books, Skellig, by David Almond. There, the eponymous protagonist might almost be any homeless man, but, as he eventually admits to the children who have helped rescue him, he's really 'something combining aspects of human, owl and angel'. Almond acknowledges the influence of a short story by Gabriel García Márquez, A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings, usually classified as magic realism. Armitage's poem is more oblique: not contained easily in any genre box, it's essentially concerned with questioning the human response to natural phenomena, and asking how we can provide 'evidence' to challenge our possible illusions. There is an ecological force to the inquiry: humans need some enchantment to draw them into a less than self-centred concern with the environment, but we need to know what we see when we see 'nature', to best be able to preserve it. It's a big question for ecopoets, too. Nest Box begins when the 'drunken old fool' (or supposed one) swears 'blind' that he saw an angel in the sky. He burbles a riff of conflicting images: 'half-human, half eagle', 'white flames in mid-air // a ghost with wings'. The reporters investigating the story, after the man has 'keeled over', search for evidence, but find only the remains of an owl's last meal. Armitage's narrative, casual but determinedly objective, pursues the qualifications of rhetorical argument, the 'strange' and the 'but then'… A second observer, a young girl, swears her own sighting to have been a barn owl. But are the two visions incompatible? The evidence for the sighting of the angel consists of the remains of small mammals ('pellets of small bones and teeth, // and skulls, and part-digested fur / and knotted hair'). The evidence for the barn owl is pursued by birdwatchers, a breed of narrator we'd expect to be less unreliable than reporters. They check the nest box and find a mysterious, mixed assemblage: 'tinselly silver threads / and luminous turds // and a warm meteorite / and a few feathers made only of light.' Are the angel and the owl sharing the nest box by any chance? There are lively if not unpredictable 'turns' as Armitage's fast-moving, rhymed and half-rhymed couplets unroll, blending journalese and lyric tones. No adjudication is imposed: ultimately, the evidence for the nest box angel may be as unreliable as the old drunk's sighting of the creature itself. The young and not-so-young reader's imaginative intelligence is well-nourished. What evidence, we wonder, would show that an angel had used a nest-box meant for an owl? What is an angel? What is this one like? It's clearly not a grumpy old man with wings, and not as grand and strange as what was seen by the 'drunken old fool', either. It's an angel the size of a barn-owl, or smaller. Should we think of Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica? Perhaps it's not any traditional kind of angel, but, in view of the 'warm meteorite', not essentially supernatural. The muscles of ratiocination and imagination need to be continually exercised by us earth-dwellers, not least because life-forms on planets other than ours are almost certain to be discovered one day soon. Armitage's 'Welcome Note' to Dwell is relevant to Nest Box. He describes how his grandparents fought to guard the eaves of their proudly well-maintained council house against messy nesting house martins. 'This kind of inhospitality,' Armitage writes, 'has increased in direct proportion to soaring human populations, and the consequence of homelessness for most living things is extinction. House martins are now a red-listed bird.' It's something to bear in mind as we enjoy the magic and humour of the angel-owl but ponder the last traces of its residency in the well-meant nest box. Dwell by Simon Armitage, illustrated by Beth Munro, is published by Faber & Faber, priced £10. To support the Guardian, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
The Guardian
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Poem of the week: Nest Box by Simon Armitage
Nest Box When the drunken old fool saw the barn owl, he swore blind it was an angel. 'Half-human, half-eagle,' he told someone in the town square. 'White flames in mid-air, a ghost with wings,' he crowed to the gathering crowd. 'A weird presence that materialised out of the heavens,' he said to the scrum of reporters before he keeled over. They searched the meadow and heath but found only pellets of small bones and teeth and skulls and part-digested fur and knotted hair. Which was strange, because when the young girl saw the angel she swore blind it was a barn owl, but when birdwatchers went to the copse and looked in the nest box they found tinselly silver threads and luminous turds and a warm meteorite and a few feathers made only of light. Nest Box is from Simon Armitage's Dwell, a slim hardback collection illustrated by the talented Cornish artist and printmaker, Beth Munro. The briefly titled poems, such as Drey, Den, Hibernaculum and Insect Hotel, focus on the safe places, natural or devised, inhabited by the wildlife of the restored Lost Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall. Eventually, we're told, the poems will be 'manifested physically at site-specific locations and in different guises' – as installations, treasure-trails, sculptures and so on. Dwell, therefore, is an illustrated print preview, an informal, engaging, often humorous short collection that will appeal to younger readers, and occasional readers, and sharpen every reader's ecological conscience. The Lost Gardens project, today and in its future planned restorations, has supreme ecological significance, as Dwell makes clear. It's a story with major historical-political dimensions, too, concerning class, regionalism, and the first world war. I'm already speculating, and hoping, that a full-length collection might emerge later from the poet laureate's heartfelt engagement with the 'Willow Garden' (as its Cornish name translates). It is rich material. While the poems in Dwell are simultaneously grounded and freely imaginative, Nest Box addresses more fundamental questions about what we define as real. It reminded me, on a first reading, of similar questions raised by one of my favourite children's books, Skellig, by David Almond. There, the eponymous protagonist might almost be any homeless man, but, as he eventually admits to the children who have helped rescue him, he's really 'something combining aspects of human, owl and angel'. Almond acknowledges the influence of a short story by Gabriel García Márquez, A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings, usually classified as magic realism. Armitage's poem is more oblique: not contained easily in any genre box, it's essentially concerned with questioning the human response to natural phenomena, and asking how we can provide 'evidence' to challenge our possible illusions. There is an ecological force to the inquiry: humans need some enchantment to draw them into a less than self-centred concern with the environment, but we need to know what we see when we see 'nature', to best be able to preserve it. It's a big question for ecopoets, too. Nest Box begins when the 'drunken old fool' (or supposed one) swears 'blind' that he saw an angel in the sky. He burbles a riff of conflicting images: 'half-human, half eagle', 'white flames in mid-air // a ghost with wings'. The reporters investigating the story, after the man has 'keeled over', search for evidence, but find only the remains of an owl's last meal. Armitage's narrative, casual but determinedly objective, pursues the qualifications of rhetorical argument, the 'strange' and the 'but then'… A second observer, a young girl, swears her own sighting to have been a barn owl. But are the two visions incompatible? The evidence for the sighting of the angel consists of the remains of small mammals ('pellets of small bones and teeth, // and skulls, and part-digested fur / and knotted hair'). The evidence for the barn owl is pursued by birdwatchers, a breed of narrator we'd expect to be less unreliable than reporters. They check the nest box and find a mysterious, mixed assemblage: 'tinselly silver threads / and luminous turds // and a warm meteorite / and a few feathers made only of light.' Are the angel and the owl sharing the nest box by any chance? There are lively if not unpredictable 'turns' as Armitage's fast-moving, rhymed and half-rhymed couplets unroll, blending journalese and lyric tones. No adjudication is imposed: ultimately, the evidence for the nest box angel may be as unreliable as the old drunk's sighting of the creature itself. The young and not-so-young reader's imaginative intelligence is well-nourished. What evidence, we wonder, would show that an angel had used a nest-box meant for an owl? What is an angel? What is this one like? It's clearly not a grumpy old man with wings, and not as grand and strange as what was seen by the 'drunken old fool', either. It's an angel the size of a barn-owl, or smaller. Should we think of Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica? Perhaps it's not any traditional kind of angel, but, in view of the 'warm meteorite', not essentially supernatural. The muscles of ratiocination and imagination need to be continually exercised by us earth-dwellers, not least because life-forms on planets other than ours are almost certain to be discovered one day soon. Armitage's 'Welcome Note' to Dwell is relevant to Nest Box. He describes how his grandparents fought to guard the eaves of their proudly well-maintained council house against messy nesting house martins. 'This kind of inhospitality,' Armitage writes, 'has increased in direct proportion to soaring human populations, and the consequence of homelessness for most living things is extinction. House martins are now a red-listed bird.' It's something to bear in mind as we enjoy the magic and humour of the angel-owl but ponder the last traces of its residency in the well-meant nest box. Dwell by Simon Armitage, illustrated by Beth Munro, is published by Faber & Faber, priced £10. To support the Guardian, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
New Statesman
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New Statesman
Poetry doesn't only exist on the page
I've been on the road for a couple of weeks, giving readings from my new book of poems, Dwell. A few years ago I bumped into Tim Smit in a pub in Yorkshire. We started talking about some of the site-specific poems I'd been writing and the ways text can be presented in a landscape, and cooked up a plan to install poems at the Eden Project. On a visit there to scope out possibilities, he invited me to the Lost Gardens of Heligan, and I think we both recognised that the gardens are a more naturally poetic place, all nooks and hollows, full of 'lostness' waiting to be discovered and versified. I've never studied English beyond A-level (some of my old teachers would rightly argue there wasn't much studying even then). I did a geography degree, and there's a circularity in the way things have turned out: I was reading poems when I should have been learning about topography and terrain, and these days a lot of the poems I write are not primarily for the page but for al fresco locations. Of late, these include a poem for a newly created park on the banks of the Tees in Stockton, a poem inscribed in the paving stones of a pedestrianised street in Huddersfield, and a poem incorporated into the new sea-defence wall along the Portsmouth-Southsea shoreline. That poem has been artfully fashioned in ship's brass and is positioned about half a mile from where I lived as an undergraduate, just to bring that circularity… full circle. One of my former lecturers got in touch the other day to say he'd cleaned some seagull shit from it. It must have felt like marking one of my town planning essays all over again. The poems in Dwell will all eventually find their physical shape in the Lost Gardens, as carvings, signs or sculptures, but for now they're making their way in the world on the printed page. I gave them an airing at the Hay Festival the other week, accompanied by slides of Beth Munro's illustrations to bring some visual relief to the occasion – without which the event is just a man with a book in his hand making his mouth open and close. I love a good slide deck, and always run a PowerPoint with the poems where technology allows. The purists probably consider it vulgar, but it reminds me of the homemade ways we entertained ourselves when I was growing up, watching somebody's holiday snaps projected against a living room wall at a slightly cock-eyed angle, the clunk of the slides as they dropped into the carousel, the upside-down photos ('Ha ha ha, did you go to Australia?') and the smell of burning when something went wrong. Hay Festival is a countryside experience. Hay Bluff forms a striking backdrop, and further off Bannau Brycheiniog (aka the Brecon Beacons) balloon on the horizon, often darkly. The site is in a field on the edge of the town, and the events are held in marquees. When the wind blows the big tents flap and rattle. It sometimes feels like a dialogue with the elements, or as if the gods of meteorology are passing judgement on the presented work. It's a festival of ideas rather than just books and literature; the famous, wealthy and powerful are sometimes part of the programme – I've been in the green room when there have been more bodyguards than authors. On the last Saturday I went to see Sam Lee, folk singer, folklorist, writer, and many other things beside. His face was burnt from a month outdoors, despite being pretty much nocturnal over that period. Each spring he leads groups of people into thickets of English woodland where nightingales mate and nest. In the middle of the night the birds sing and he sings back to them. Or he sings and the birds respond. I've never been, but must do soon, before the nightingale becomes extinct in this country and Sam has to warble requiems into a dark absence. On stage he apologises for his croaky voice – he's been breathing campfire smoke for the last few weeks. No one would notice. He makes wonderful records but to hear him live is to witness something unique, not just in his delivery (which is extraordinary) but in the songs themselves, songs rescued and revived from dying traditions, songs taught to him by travelling communities, songs that feel like nature itself in musical form. I kid you not, at one point the birds outside joined in. [See also: We are all Mrs Dalloway now] Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Related
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Miami Herald
04-06-2025
- Lifestyle
- Miami Herald
Modern day treehouse with its own guest residence lists in California. See it
The idea of a treehouse may bring thoughts of childhood, when you hung out with friends in a makeshift wooden structure that only a selective few could enter. Well, this isn't that. Welcome to an adult's treehouse, which overlooks a popular neighborhood in Los Angeles — and is listed for $2.79 million. 'Modern architectural wonder with a guest house in a prime Silver Lake location!' the listing on Compass says. 'A renovation by Glen Bell, AIA, of DEX Studio landed this modern on Dwell magazine's 'Design Home Tour.' Collaborating with the architect were artists and landscape architects, who produced a high-style, hand-crafted — yet immensely livable — property.' It's a mid-century modern treehouse, a news release calls it, complete with two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a guest house with one bedroom, one bathroom. 'This particular home is a work of art. So many of the homes built in the last 20 years have been designed by builders who don't necessarily understand what it means to build specific to a site,' listing agent Victoria Massengale said in the release. 'To experience a home that has been built by an architect who considers how the light is going through the Brise-soleil and stained glass panels or how the breeze is going to move through the home is not only refreshing, but inspiring.' Features, per the listing, include: Amazing viewsDetached 2-car garagePatioWalk-in closet 'This property offers a seamless transition between indoor and outdoor experiences through Bell's understanding of light,' the release says — which is easy to see through the photos. The home is almost a paradox that allows light to seep through the halls, while also keeping it cool with the surrounding greenery. The listing is held by Massengale and Michael Maguire at Compass.
Associated Press
04-06-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
Dwell Magazine Features Sisters Oregon-Based Startup Steel Hut in Recent Article
Founder Marie Saldivar offered a tour of her guesthouse, which served as a proof of concept for Steel Hut SISTERS, OREGON - June 3rd, 2025 - Steel Hut, which offers consumer-ready building plans for Quonset huts, and its founder, Marie Saldivar, were recently featured in an article by Quonset huts are experiencing a resurgence in popularity, offering a cost-effective, easy-to-build alternative to traditional construction and tiny homes. Quonset huts were first used by the military, later becoming a prominent mid-century design for residential builds. Today, they've made a comeback, and Steel Hut makes it easy for people everywhere to make their Quonset hut dreams come true. Steel Hut founder Marie Saldivar is a fourth-generation metal industry innovator and experienced builder, a full-time real estate agent, and a new mom. For five years, she spent countless hours perfecting the Steel Hut building process. 'We live and breathe huts,' said Saldivar . She does more than just design and sell consumer-ready Quonset hut building plans, however. Saldivar has proven she can talk the talk and walk the walk, as evidenced by the stunning home she built as a proof-of-concept for Steel Hut. Her experimental steel arched home was just featured in an article exclusively on In 'Budget Breakdown: Oregon Designer Turns a Quonset Hut into a Guesthouse for $345k', writer Grace Bernard sat down with Saldivar to explore her creativity and inspiration. 'I always take on a bit too much,' said Saldivar at the beginning of the interview, a sentiment that is impressing people from around the world by way of her incredible ready-to-go steel arched building kit plans. On the outside, Saldivar's first Quonset hut, conceived as a mother in law suite, is a breathtaking, unique design of steel and wood conveying 1200 square feet of living space. Concrete pads serve as a porch area and wrap around one side of the home. Sleek and streamlined, this simple yet stunning design would be at home in the city, in the woods, or by the ocean. This one, however, is nestled in a forest, offering a picturesque view. When peering inside, visitors are met with a captivating open space punctuated with clean lines and lots of light streaming in from tall windows. A cozy living area with a wood burning stove awaits, and a practical kitchen and dining room adjoins. The article at Dwell has further details on the story behind Saldivar's first Quonset home and can be found at Steel Hut's pre-fab Quonset hut plans offer the same careful design as this one. Find further details at ABOUT STEEL HUT Steel Hut offers consumer-ready building plans for steel arched building kits, providing sustainability-focused designs to promote healthier communities and environments. Media Contact Company Name: Steel Hut Contact Person: Marie Saldivar Email: Send Email City: Sisters State: OR 97759 Country: United States Website: Source: Oregon Web Solutions
