Night River Wood

Night River Wood is an evolving collection of poems, essays and interludes on the subject of nature, place, memory and mystery, written from a hillside on the Welsh borders by writer and artist James Roberts.

Essays and interludes can be found here on the site. Poems and drawings are sent as emails and can also be bought occasionally as printed pamphlets.

Success and Succession

by Editor | August 31, 2018 | Journal | 0 Comments

The path drops steeply via a series of switchbacks, between granite outcrops and boulders, crossing streams that plummet down the mountain. I hear birds whose calls I don’t recognize, their songs mingling with the drone of traffic far below on the road. It is hard to...

Heartwood

by Editor | January 19, 2019 | Journal | 0 Comments

The statistics: it has taken 12 hours to smooth the surface, 4 shifts of 3 hours, first with 60, then 80, then 120 grit paper. Dust gathering on me, my hands following the rings as they appeared from beneath the deep scores made by the chainsaw. I could have done all...

Dark Water

by Editor | January 12, 2020 | Journal | 0 Comments

Tonight the river is high. I don’t know what atmospheric conditions out in the Atlantic are driving this endless rain. Like all weather these days it doesn’t seem right. My headlights project two beams across the water, which boils and writhes downstream. Nothing...

Offshore

by Editor | December 16, 2018 | Journal | 0 Comments

On the last day of a family holiday I sneaked out of the caravan just after dawn and walked to my favourite spot on the cliff to say goodbye to the sea. The place was near an old stone hut where fisherman used to keep watch for the pilchard shoals coming close to...

Ryokan and the Rooks

by Editor | September 23, 2018 | Journal | 0 Comments

I have a small but growing collection of bird skulls, mostly found on walks in the woods or on cliff-top paths. My favourite is from a manx shearwater. I found it on a clifftop path on Skomer Island, which is home to a hundred thousand of these seabirds in the summer....

Up Close and Far Off

by Editor | February 19, 2019 | Journal | 0 Comments

I don't remember the name of the town where the railway started, or the destination at the end of the line, only that the train sometimes arrived, but most of the time didn't. I think I waited a week. There were a handful of half-ruined colonial buildings on a single...

Hidden Words

by Editor | September 14, 2018 | Journal | 0 Comments

I’ve been scribbling words onto stones for a few years. The hills around here are littered with small, disused quarries, shallow pits containing loose stones of different shapes and sizes. Choosing the right one is difficult as the local mudstone is coarse and it’s...

The Roundabout

by Editor | October 7, 2018 | Journal | 0 Comments

It’s an ancient-looking structure cresting a high hill. The stone was formed in the Silurian period, 400 million years ago. It was gathered from the surrounding hilltop quarries and assembled into a head-height circular wall for Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee. The...

Unremembered

by Editor | November 25, 2018 | Journal | 0 Comments

The cloud is down. My navigation is reliant on the recall of shapes close up: twisted trees, broken walls, mawn pools, the bends and intersections in tracks. In the past week fieldfares have returned, I can hear them now, ransacking the rowans. A small flock of...

Halfway

by Editor | September 7, 2018 | Journal | 0 Comments

The lake is clouded, an almost luminous turquoise. The bottom feels slick, like soaked wood in winter. For weeks the daytime temperature has been over twenty-five degrees yet the water is freezing, fed from the glacier above. I wade up to my waist, then dive. The...