This book is a forest.

Enter and find the commonplace and the mysterious intertwined. Look up, a squirrel throws an acorn on your head. Red Kites swoop as if they’re nothing special.

Is that a Fir? What sort of Fir? A Douglas Fir? A Douglas Firbanks Junior? Look behind a tree and see – what? Yet another tree? From out of nettles, a naked cyclist? A pair of deer sauntering? A neighbour and her Wiemaraner?

The Listening Forest

Published as the culmination of a residency held by Sophie Herxheimer with Fermynwoods Contemporary Art in the East Midlands.

Sophie as an inner-city Londoner was intrigued to swap her familiar streets for a remote cottage in an ancient woodland. Getting lost in tracts of forest in and around the town of Corby inspired a new sequence of poems as well as many drawings and collages. A selection of these appear alongside the bulk of the book’s content: stories collected and drawn live in ink, from members of the public in the area, about the ways we humans relate to nature and the woods.

Please wander in. Make the path your own.