Into the Ice - radio recording online now

The full recording of me and Ana reading part three of The City on the radio in Belgrade. The final version for the cd will be a lot more rehearsed and the music changed a bit, but I'm pretty pleased with this for a first live performance... Music as before by Ryan Norris.

Into the Ice video

Ana has uploaded our recent radio reading to youtube with some photos, though as it was 18 minutes long youtube has cut off the last three bah humbug. However one gets the idea. I am currently trying to upload the full recording to soundcloud but am having some problems, so watch this space. Oh and this is part three of me (Alice Maddicott) and Ana Seferovic's collaborative poetry book The City. Music for this part by Ryan Norris.

Forest in a cave - Hang son doong, Vietnam.

I'm a bit fearful of underground, always liking to be as high up as possible (hence tree house obsession), but if I had to live in a cave I'd want one with a forest - who thought you could have a tree house in a cave?! Hang son doong in Vietnam is the largest cave in the world, with amazing giant caverns you could fit buildings in, but where part of the cave roof fell in many many years ago the light coaxed life out of the previous darkness and now a miniature rainforest thrives. I saw this the other day on the BBC's wonderful "How to grow a planet" documentary. I really recommend seeking this programme out (it might still be on iplayer) as it also had fascinating bits on fossilised forests and tree defences against dinosaurs, as well as a wonderful sequence where the warning communications between plants were filmed (they release an until recently undetectable gas when their leaves are cut to warm others about predatory herbivores). Here's a clip of the cave forest segment.

Here's also a couple of photos courtesy of National Geographic taken by Carsten Peter - there's an article on the caves on their website too that is worth checking out.

We Are Reading

Photos from me and Ana reading on the radio - we look slightly less like Victorian Kraftwerk this time... Link to recording of part three of The City coming soon. Thank you to the Belgrade gang for a lovely evening.