Stranger in the Mask of a Deer

Stranger in the Mask of a Deer conjures an elemental, dreamlike narrative ranging from the present to the Late-Upper Palaeolithic, when the British peninsula was gradually reoccupied by humans and animals returning from the greater continent after the Ice Age. Richard Skelton began this book-length poem many years ago with the intention of exploring the history of Britain's landscape, only for the text to transform into a kind of literary seance, involving both human and other-than-human voices. Its transforming power lies in the accumulative magic of the word as ritual. Skelton's is a mesmeric lyric, probing the edges of consciousness towards a place where 'there are always presences / always inherences / things beyond sight.' 'An incredibly moving, essential meditation on where we have come from, where we are, and where we are headed.' Kerri ní Dochartaigh

Richard Skelton is a writer, musician and publisher from Lancashire in northern England. His work is deeply focused on landscape and our relationship with the natural world. Between 2005 and 2011 he ran the acclaimed Sustain-Release private press, publishing beautifully packaged albums of music under a variety of pseudonyms. His albums include Marking Time (2008), Verse of Birds (2012), Towards a Frontier (2017), and Border Ballads (2019). His books include Landings (2009), Limnology (2012), Beyond the Fell Wall (2015) and Dark Hollow Dark (2019). His novella The Look Away was longlisted for the 2019 Portico Prize. For the past decade he has run Corbel Stone Press, one of the foremost UK small presses dedicated to landscape and nature, with the Canadian poet Autumn Richardson. He also runs the Centre for Alterity Studies.