Winter gifts?

 

Winter gifts?

books for long, dark nights

Waiting for the quiet feathers,

That drift through the trees,

That smother the world into silence.

 Waiting, still waiting, for the snow.

Waiting for the snow, Gordon MacLellan

As the nights are drawing in and our thoughts turn to the lingering darkness and a need for something to keep us busy other than sitting knitting socks for sheep, and there are gifts to pursue for Christmas, Midwinter, Yule and All, Creeping Toad would like to offer a few extra treats for you, for a loved one or maybe for someone whose complacency you would simply like to disturb….

Books

Sacred Animals: creative, reflective and adventurous ways of exploring relationships with the animal world (or apply similar ideas to trees, other plants, fungi and stones: it’s up to you!) Here are ways of building meditations, composing poems, making outfits, masks, tokens and totems, £15.06 *

Waiting for the Snow: my most recent collection of poems: words for dark evenings and  desire for open spaces, for the northern seas on the rocks of Orkney, for ravens watching the world go by and for the kelpie who waits in dark still poems

50 pages, A5, £5.97

There are cracks in the pavement 

Where the bears live,

Feeding on the careless words we drop

Between one step and the next.

Whisper along the Wind: or you can listen and be drawn into stillness by the beautiful music of Gifts from Crows and words from myself: Orchards are here and the dark night of Vigil and the sharp Beaks of Raven

Baba Yaga: tales of an old witch: a small collection celebrating one of the wildest of the wild witches from her house that follows you through the crowded woods to herself polishing the rust off her teeth, £4.36

Old stones and ancient bones: an older collection poems with words from hollow hills, of bones and skulls and the satyr who waits on the Dancing Lawns

£5.00 direct from me

*Please don't blame me for the strangeness of pricings!  But you can order direct - cheaper! Email below

Ordering: you can go through eBay: the links will take you there. If you want the full set, message me directly as that might be easier!

Email: creepingtoad@btinternet.com

Hide a witch,

Inside a house,

Inside a wood,

Inside a beck,

Inside a bog,

Inside a crag,

Inside a world,

Inside a doll.

 

Old stones and ancient bones

Planning for Wintry presents?

not all stones and bones

Looking for something a little bit different for a present – Christmas soon, and Yule and Mother’s Night and Saturnalia if you’re of a Classical inclination…why not indulge yourself and a friend with a copy of my book Old stones and ancient bones: poems from the hollow hills?

Don’t like poetry? Why not try again? With poems from the dark, peopled gloom of Neolithic tombs on Orkney to the windswept moors of Derbyshire, an excitement of skulls and the beauty of stillness before winter arrives….

£5.00 a copy (includes UK P&P) and while stocks last, with Old Stones, get a free copy of “River and Sea” a little book featuring two of my stories.

To order direct:

Email me Creeping Toad

Payment: by cheque, Bacs or Paypal (to creepingtoad@btinternet.com)

or from Amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stones-Ancient-Bones-Gordon-Maclellan/dp/1291465936/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1447511315&sr=8-2&keywords=old+stones+and+ancient

an appetiser

The Satyr’s stories:

Beginning

“I was born out of the need of old stone and tree roots for a voice.

I began as an idea, shaped by water running through stone in deep caves, gathering a body for myself out of long lost bones, out of stranded horns and hooves and left-over memories. My flesh is earth, my skin grass and bark, my blood the mineral rich, crystal-growing streams of limestone darkness

Now I am here, playing the music of the wind, listening to bluebells ring, and the slow singing of carp in the cold pools. I am the watcher in the woods, the touch of the breeze, the rustle in the undergrowth. I am the shadow that slips away.

Always here. Never seen.”

 

Blackwater at Calke Abbey, source of the Satyr stories