Hearing voices – capturing the sounds of the Peak District

My Peak District

PHOTO: SAM JOHNSON

Mark Gwynne Jones Poet, performer and recording artist Mark Gwynne Jones talks to Alison Riley about how the Peak District National Park has shaped his personal outlook and inspired his work.

Igrew up during the 70s and early 80s, on a hill farm between Matlock and Chesterfield. We were turfed out in the morning and whistled back at teatime, after a day scrambling around woods and disused quarries. I also spent time being very quiet and learned to get close to animals without them knowing I was there. I learned to tickle trout and hunt rabbits.

Then, in 1989, I became vegetarian on hearing how the Brazilian rainforest was being destroyed for meat production. But there is something to be said about finding your own food; it is very primal, we’re hunter gatherers in our biological make-up, and it seems to be partly what is missing from modern life.

Humans have a desire for nature and adventure and overcoming danger – the rise in extreme sports seems to be a reaction to how safety conscious our culture has become. Young people need to prove themselves to both themselves and their peers. Gang culture is partly a substitute for rites of passage that are no longer available or practised. Simple things like, as a kid, sleeping out in the woods on your own and facing fears of the dark and unfamiliar Mark Gwynne Jones is a poet and performer and is currently working on a project called ‘Voices from the Peak’ – capturing and recording the sounds of the Peak District landscape.

noises. Overcoming fears allows you to discover your inner strength and resource, and once you’ve found it, you can draw on it throughout your life. Our detachment from nature, and the challenges it throws at us, isn’t healthy.

The Peak District’s landscape and its contrasting environments is what has kept me here. It is special because I know it intimately, and also because it’s bordered by Sheffield, Nottingham, Derby, Stoke and Manchester – my work often draws me to the cities, but its wild beauty will not let me move away. I find there’s a richer mix of people that live and work in and visit the Peak District than other National Parks. It has more real world connections,

Mark loves disappearing into the landscape and becoming part of it. PHOTO: DAVE STURT

Mark Gwynne Jones Born: Mark Gwynne Jones, Matlock Bath. Family: partner Louise and sons Sam and Arthur. Favourite place: Minninglow, in the White Peak. Mark says: “It’s a seat of seeing. It is actually a Neolithic chambered tomb within a circle of old beech trees, on a hilltop, that you can see for miles around and get your bearings from. It would have been important in ancient times, before maps, when the valleys were thick with undergrowth and people lived on the higher ground.” Previous work: Lyric in Limestone (a Glassball production) CD collection of some of Mark’s Peak District poems, recorded on location with musicians PsychicBread. Five collections of poetry. www.markgwynnejones.com

more cross-cultural happenings, with its surrounding communities.

I love disappearing into the landscape, becoming part of it. We live within our opinions and analyses, but when you’re out in the landscape you enter another language – the colours, the sounds, the textures of the land, it goes beyond the everyday. When I’m working with schools we do a listening exercise. We sit in a circle and silently count on fingers how many sounds the students can hear. Some will hear four or five, some hear more. It’s a listening meditation that people can try for themselves.

My current project, Voices from the Peak, has integrated me with the place in a new way. I’m creating a journey through the Peak District in voices, sounds and music. The When I’m out in the landscape I enter another language

idea came from a gate I heard vibrating as it closed. I could imagine it being sampled by Pink Floyd! It had an otherworldly sound that alerted me to the music of things in our environment, which led me to the idea of capturing the landscape’s voices. Inspiration has also come from people I’ve had conversations with. The landscape shapes people, like the octogenarian farmer I interviewed – it’s like listening to the land talking.

For the project, I slept out under old oak trees in Clough Wood, to record the dawn chorus. Those trees were there long before Mark recording the sound of a helicopter spreading seed on Kinder for the Moors for the Future Partnership’s moorland restoration work. PHOTO: PHILIP JOHNSON

I was born and will be there long after I have gone – inside my sleeping bag I felt like a caterpillar beneath the trees – we see ourselves as being so important as a species but in the scheme of things we’re a tiny part of something much bigger. Visiting wild places and quiet places is good for maintaining perspective.

It is a curse and a blessing being a poet! It is something I am bound to do. The most enjoyable aspect is the writing, more than performing, that’s the hard part, taking it to market! I feel at my most whole when I am writing – it allows me to tune into a subtle awareness. It stems from a desire to communicate and make sense of what it means to be alive. It’s crazy when you stop to think: Why me? Why time? Why the world? Those questions apply to everybody. There’s a purpose in nature, in life and in death – it’s visceral, that sense of life and death being two sides of the same coin, equally valid. There’s nothing to fear because it’s both and something more.

VOICES FROM THE PEAK Funded by the Arts Council and supported by the Peak District National Park Authority, Voices from the Peak is a poetic soundscape featuring the landscape through a variety of recordings. Mark Gwynne Jones will perform it during 2020 and 2021 (look out for details on the website), and it will be available to download from www.peakdistrict.gov.uk/ voicesfromthepeak

Mark’s advice for finding inspiration outdoors...

Listening to all the different sounds you can hear immediately connects you to the world. It’s grounding. A form of meditation. Climb a hill, sleep in the woods. Don’t get too comfortable! Go for a walk without knowing where you’re going to end up. Whatever you do, take a notepad and jot down thoughts that spring to mind – let the landscape speak to you.