It was an incredible honour to have been invited as a speaker, with poet Christine De Luca, at what was a sell-out event at this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival – a truly wonderful and exciting festival of ideas and a celebration of the power of books and of reading – held at The Edinburgh Futures Institute in August. The Festival theme ‘changing your mind’ focused on deep listening, the nature of consciousness, the navigation of polarised opinions, AI regulation and misinformation, in evolving cultural landscapes and part of the thrill for us was to have had our intention – that of reflecting on ways in which our experience of paying close attention while spending time in nature – had been so understood by the selectors of the line up of authors whose work spoke to this theme.
During this event, Christine and I discussed our collaboration, while I was Artist in Residence at Dr. Neil’s Garden, which lies nestled by the shores of Duddingston Loch, at the foot of Arthur’s Seat and Crow Hill, in Edinburgh, and about our book, Such Fragile Futures: An Artist and a Poet Reflect in a Garden (Main Point Books, 2025) which was born out of our conversations during time spent there over a year. We were thrilled to have as our chair for this event Dr. Kitty Wheater, who is Mindfulness Chaplain at The University of Edinburgh and who wrote a beautiful essay in response to our collaboration, also published as a booklet Of Mutual Things: Observations in Four Parts (Main Point Books, in 2026).
Find out more about my collaboration with Christine De Luca at Dr. Neil’s Garden here »
There are not many copies of Such Fragile Futures left but it is still available from:
And is also stocked at The National Galleries of Scotland shops
