Stephe Harrop

'Jockey Jack': a talented C18th horse-rider & groom who fell on hard times & ended life as a pauper in Nottinghamshire. He was found, after his death, to have been born a woman

Love little snippets like these...
#18c

Image shows a board outside Dorothy studios in Liverpool. The poster is a collage from the Haunted Paper exhibition, an altered Observer’s book

The Haunted Paper exhibition is now open at Dorothy, Jamaica Street in the Baltic Triangle Liverpool. Thanks to everyone who came last night to the opening. Lots of you! And some great conversations. The exhibition is on until September 19th, weekdays. I would love you to see it.

The Gaza students with scholarships to UK unable to take up their places Visa obstacles threaten to dash the hopes of 40 students due to start in September. Here are some of their stories

Please write to your MP and demand that the Home Office act to help these students make it out of Gaza to study in the UK this September. Time is running out to get the government to move on this; they absolutely could take action and are — so far — choosing not to.

It sounds excellent.

There's a great maze of tunnels, a Labyrinth. It's like a great dark city, under the hill. Full of gold, and the swords of old heroes, and old crowns, and bones, and years, and silence.

NortheringWorkshop — The Portico Library Join contemporary storyteller Stephe Harrop for a creative writing workshop around stories and folk tales from the northern borders.

My September storytelling and creative writing workshop @porticolibrary.bsky.social has already sold out!

Those Manchester folk must be properly hungry for more wandering through storied landscapes, imagining new ways to inhabit our different, diverse norths.

www.theportico.org.uk/event-calend...

Delilah rides a heron on the endangered species carousel at the Indy Zoo because it is the most on-brand thing possible. She is wearing cheap red sunglasses that she bought for $20 at the zoo because it was just too much work to go back up to her hotel room.

Every carousel?
Every (and I cannot stress this enough) carousel.

Do not pander. Do not dumb down. Do not make your voice less magical. Trust your audience to be smarter than you. Trust them to be as curious as fuck. Never blame anyone for the tepid, lazy choices you make in your work.

I’m reminded of this Baldwin quote.

I hope this email never finds you. I hope a single shaft of light pierces the broken ceiling, giving life to saplings and ferns. I hope the old computer went dark years ago, and the office smells of moss and wild spores. I hope that you are free.

Image shows collage of found paper fragments, handwritten notes and inked abstract drawing. Block printed words Gh st and WILD TWIN. Invite to Private view, 6th August 2025, Dorothy 22B Jordan Street

My exhibition 'Haunted Paper' opens at Dorothy, Liverpool next Wednesday August 6th. The Private View is from 5pm to 7pm.
The Ghost Town and Wild Twin notebooks and pages from them will be on view. It would be lovely to see you there! x

I’d have like to have seen Venice in the winter, or explored the low Pyranees, but I’ve walked the local water meadows for a decade now and only noticed the glorious low flying swallows last night, so there’s value in offering a long hard stare to the same corner of the land.

Ananke, the Greek personification of necessity. She has no temples, for there can be no prayers to what must be.

Who's your favourite not-very-well-known mythological or legendary figure? I'm a big fan of Manannán/Manann of the isle of Man, who could shroud the island in mist to protect it from enemies. His superpower is crap weather. Love it. Also: turns into 3 legs sometimes.

I want to tell you something about my Doctor Who book.

If you open it, you'll find it's dedicated to Katrina.

Katrina was a friend of mine with profound intellectual disability, which came bundled with a whole bunch of physical disabilities.

1/

Open letter from UK university staff: Request for biometric deferral and safe evacuation of incoming Palestinian students and scholars from Gaza to UK Universities More than 40 students currently trapped in Gaza with full scholarships to UK Universities are asking for a safe route to come and study. We, the academic community hoping to welcome these scholars, ca...

An open letter has been launched today (27/7/25) for members of the UK academic community (academics and other university staff) to sign, to press the UK Home Office to facilitate safe passage out of Gaza for 40+ students with offers for UK universities.

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Good art has a hinterland. Individual readers/viewers can explore that if they wish. As well as assessing the work’s immediate aims and success, critics consider that hinterland in depth, e.g. the creator’s intent, their influences, placing the piece in the wider landscape of related creativity. 2/2

'look at walls splashed with a number of stains, or stones of various mixed colours .. you can see their resemblances to landscapes, mountains, rivers .. varicoloured stones, like the sound of bells, in whose peelings you can find every name and word you can imagine'

[leonardo da vinci]

Goodnight from Julianne Timmer, setting the alarm clock for just before sunrise so she can catch a glimpse of the local Wodewose returning to King’s Chase Forest. Goodnight from Mel Darling, comforted by the purring of the ghost cat curled at the end of her bed. Goodnight from Hookland.

A moody image with about 13 layers of landscape leading off into the distance. The furthest away one is a partially-snow-covered mountain with a rounded top. The other layers are quite blue and get darker at the front, which is almost black. Above the sky is a little pink with grey layers above and there are some dotted white clouds on the horizon above the mountainsides. This view of layers of the landscape is known as landskein :)

On this day in 2023 I took one of my favourite ever photos of #Iceland. This is Hekla, with so many layers of mountains and hills in between, taken up in the Highlands on a beautiful day.

Martin Izquierdo, 83, Dies; Costume Designer Who Specialized in Wings

Costume designer Martin Izquierdo, best known for the magnificent wings he created for “Angels in America”, has passed, per his partner, Bridgerton designer John Glaser.

He immigrated from Mexico in the 1940's under the Bracero program*. Later trained in art.

Free: archive.ph/2025.07.18-1...

🧚🏽‍♀️🧚‍♂️🧚

YouTube video by ITV Retro Ivor The Engine | Season 1 Marathon Ep.1-8 | Full Episodes

ITV are putting all of Ivor the Engine up on YouTube! Just been watching it with the baby. Well, she was asleep but I'm sure it was doing her some good subconsciously.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPae...

Face/Off Lots of scholars from different disciplines study and write about things that happened in the past. So what, if anything, makes history a separate and coherent discipline? While Contingent is a histor...

We've heard from so many fascinating people so far and we're going to start trying to find/make matches, but gee we'd love to have a political scientist or two in the mix.

A Coot charges furiously across the surface of a lake, wings tucked and head low, with vivid red eyes. The text reads: “Runs with open hostility.” “Doesn’t pace themselves.” “Shoves a swan at mile 3.” Caption: “Birds Running a Marathon – Coot”.

Ran on rage alone.

Yes. 25 years on, I teach differently: I read to them, we read silently together, we have weekly experiments week of setting different situations to read (with/out food, company, music; in/outdoors; varying light; &c) & discuss them. It's made ALL the difference to foreground reading as a process.

Reading Scenario Experiments. This series of prompts is designed to get you thinking about how the setting for reading affects concentration, comprehension, and even the existential experience of reading. Every week, one of the following prompts will appear on the syllabus. I encourage you to try all of them that you are able. How does a different reading setting affect your mood? Your receptiveness to the prose? Your pleasure or difficulty reading? What are the particular impacts of changing your lighting or surroundings? What do you notice about yourself and about the work you are reading during this experiment? 1. read by candlelight (use a small lamp in dorms where no candles are allowed!) 2. read for one hour without checking any devices, answering texts, etc. 3. walk out into nature (climb a tree, sit on a rock, grab a spot in a hammock) and read 4. host a reading night with friends & food (sit in companionable silence, reading without chatting) 5. read aloud a chapter to someone else 6. climb into bed at night and read by flashlight under the covers for at least 30 minutes, as if you’ve already been told “lights out” as a kid 7. reread a chapter and see what new things you notice the second time through 8. change your ambient-noise level: add music if you normally read in the quiet; or read without music if you are normally a music-listener 9. read with a sketchpad at hand and sketch scenes, characters, or other elements from the story 10. practice focused listening: have someone read to you 11. make yourself a special, fancy snack on a real plate to nibble while eating: pay attention to the cooking or arranging or choosing of ingredients to make it especially appetizing first 12. make tea (even if you’re not usually a tea drinker), and read and sip 13. invent a new reading scenario for yourself, or repeat the one you liked the best from this term [writing assignment using these prompts follows; text character limit prevents inclusion of it in full]

Here you go! I'll write some new ones for this semester too. They loved them. The "read without your phone or screens in the room" was a revelation, and many of them decided to keep doing it. They had NO IDEA (& were horrified) how often they interrupt themselves to look at a phone for no reason.

A 900-Year-Old Typo May Unravel a Chaucer Mystery

On a medieval typo & its interpretive consequences…
Did Chaucer write elves … or wolves?
My question: did this influence Tolkien?

Hundreds of scientists are set to take part in the first performance of a new Scottish country dance inspired by the ripples in spacetime whose existence was first theorised by Albert Einstein.

More: gla.ac/3ICip4Q

#GR24Amaldi16 #GravitationalWaves #Glasgow
@uofgravity.bsky.social

Every historian lives to glory in moments like this

Sounds like an excellent book 💛