Hampshire Poet blog - July 2026
- Damian Kelly-Basher
- 7 hours ago
- 2 min read
During his tenure, your Hampshire Poet - Damian Kelly-Basher - will be writing a series of blog posts for us sharing what he has been up to, telling us his poetic plans for the future, and inviting you to get involved in poetry in Hampshire. Read on to find out what's happening in Damian's world!
For July, Damian Kelly-Basher's Hampshire Poet blog is on Walking and Writing.
For this blog he has handed the reins to practice-based & participatory researcher, artist & writer Rae Willcox.
Notes on Walking and Writing - guest blog by Rae Willcox
I have never written a good poem at a desk.
The desk is for what you already know; walking is for finding out, with your whole body, whether you are ready for what emerges.
Walking does what stillness cannot: it delays thought. It lets experience marinade and metabolise, keeping entanglement with the world ahead of conclusion. Feeling has time to become thought, rather than being displaced by it. The desk demands direction; walking does not.
For me, walking is not flânerie. I am not drifting cleanly through landscape, observing from a distance. There is mud, misdirection, strain. Nor is it simply a method for generating material. It is the slow, sensorial work of becoming a body-with: with ground, weather, air, terrain, and the other bodies moving alongside. Writing arises not from observing a walk, but from being within it - subject to it, altered by it, step by step.
My practice is grounded here. Walking is not about clearing the mind, but following the insistence of an entangled body. Between feet and ground, skin and weather, self and other, memory and path, intention and interruption, something gathers - neither fully thought nor feeling, but the condition for both.
In this space, I feel most alive and most uncertain. The body sharpens, continually meeting thresholds of encounter. Nothing holds still. Words move rhythmically; sentences dissolve before they harden. In that unresolved motion, something true keeps unfolding, carrying me forward.
Rae Willcox (she/her) is a multidisciplinary practice-researcher. Her current doctoral work explores the undesirable, out-of-place and littered through participatory, more-than-human, creative practices within Southampton’s urban wilds.
Find her out more at www.raewillcox.com or on instagram @greengreenteas
Damian Kelly-Basher is Hampshire Poet Laureate 2024-26. The appointment of the Hampshire Poet takes place every two years and is jointly led by Winchester Poetry Festival and Hampshire Cultural Trust. The position of Hampshire Poet provides the opportunity for a Hampshire-based poet to undertake commissions, lead workshops and give readings and talks throughout the county, as well as acting as an advocate for poetry and poets.
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