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Tanya Shadrick

@tanyashadrick.bsky.social

4.3K followers 1.3K following 250 posts

Author #TheCureForSleep: a late-waking life - a Waterstones & Evening Standard Book of 22 | Creator Wild Patience Scrolls: A Mile of Writing, #BirdsOfFirle & #ConcentratesOfPlace | Founder Selkie Press | Fellow Royal Society of Arts

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · Nov 13

‘I once had a winter that was wordless’

In 2020 @littletollerbooks.bsky.social published my #BirdsOfFirle: origin story of a decade-long collective project on hope & grief as the things with feathers. I used Twitter to reach people; hope to relaunch here soon

www.littletoller.co.uk/the-clearing...

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · Sep 6

Ah what a shame. I see, yes, it has. I knew Ernest had stopped making print journals but sad to see their gorgeous website gone now too… I will put a copy of my piece onto my own website soon then, with thanks to you for letting me know!

Reposted by Tanya Shadrick

Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · Nov 14

‘Understand how much time it takes for a work, or a path, or a life to take shape’

A sculptor’s advice for art & life:

David Nash is perhaps best known for his living art piece the Ash Dome - planted in the 70s for the next millennium. He has literally grown a meaningful life. Here is his advice

Image of the Ash Dome by sculptor David Nash: a ring of Ash trees planted in the 70s and tended ever since into this dancing intertwined shape. Their location in Wales remains secret.

“the sculptor’s advice for art and life Always give your ideas ‘molecules’, quickly, before they fade: just a title is enough, or a sketch, or a few notes on scrap paper, sellotaped up and kept in view. In this way, a thing beyond your time, resources, or abilities now, is far more likely to happen in future. Be professional and serious in your work, however late and tentative your endeavours. Measure success not by the number of people who respond to what you make but be motivated instead by that one necessary person you might meet, whenever you risk putting a well-intentioned work into the world. Be moved, also, by the possibility of becoming that person to others. Tell a true, ongoing story of your life as well as your art. Even if you receive no reward or notice for what you do, you still gain meaning from this, and purpose. Understand how much time it takes for a work, or a path, or a life to take shape. Be alert to the teachings of chance.”

— The Cure for Sleep by Tanya Shadrick

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Reposted by Tanya Shadrick

Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · Aug 6

Well-worn: Husband & Wife

Was going about my quiet day alone at home, thirty years married, when the sight of our clothes without us had me stop and fill with feeling. Always-there but never-noticed: his habitual outfit, mine, hanging together on the basement door.

A white wooden door is open to a dark basement. On the door is a yellow handpainted coat rack. On the lefthand hook is a man’s khaki gardening hat, and a faded blue workjacket. On the centre hook, beside it, is a woman’s blue-and-white-spotted headscarf and a navy apron. Portrait of a long marriage as workwear.

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · Aug 6

Thank you in turn for reading. A lonely old feeling doing all the houseclearing and probate alone, I did have sense of how hard it might be in a different way to be doing it with siblings: differences in feeling, approach. I hope you feel on other side of it all now; took me longer than I thought...

Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · Aug 6

And to you for reading. Thank you x

Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · Aug 6

Ah, I can’t access my DMs on here I find! It’s asking me to follow an age verification process by email and I don’t want to let it scan my face or have my credit card as it’s asking for! Can you DM on instagram if not too much trouble? x

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · Aug 6

Oh, goosebumps at idea of that. What a wonderful story that would make!

Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · Aug 6

…but I’m enjoying being back at last with the serious quiet craft of storytelling after several years without it. I will copy your words out and put on my desk, for courage to keep going! xxx

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · Aug 6

Oh! I’ve gone all pink and pleased. What a gift. I’m finally writing a novel - it came to me as a gift upon waking in our old tent a few weeks back, the first time Nye and I have ever been in it without the children (both were away in other countries). I feel so far from the publishing world now...

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · Aug 6

Thank you dear one. You are so generous in all your online spaces. I finally travelled out from this small town last month - to visit my agent in his new home on the Norfolk/Suffolk border. How I hope that one day you and I might meet where you are. xxx

Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · Aug 6

And thank you to you in return, Sari, for reading and sharing. In many ways I’ve lost my voice with respects to sharing stories online in the last few years… even while I miss the connections it brings to my life. xx

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · Aug 6

And to you for reading - and finding me over on Substack just now!

Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · Aug 6

Oh my…. a family home of 70 more years. My mother moved so often that I can’t imagine the deep feeling of returning to a place that has held so much, so long...

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Reposted by Tanya Shadrick

Dr. Dawn Wiseman @sciencedawn.bsky.social · Aug 6

This gave me all the feels, perhaps because I’ve just returned from 2+ weeks in a home my family has lived in for 70+ years. It is still full of people no longer living, and it was lovely to visit with them for a while.

Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · Aug 6

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · Aug 6

Thank you dear Laine & likewise! I’m finally writing again - a first novel that arrived with me like a gift on first day of camping with my husband during our recent anniversary (which was also our first holiday without the children in 18 years!). So now I’m happily holed up for the rest of summer!

Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · Aug 6

Already a year ago since I went alone back to my childhood coast to deal with the small flat my mother lived her last years in after she left a terrible 40-year marriage.

Objects from left-behind lives much on my mind today, so reposting my story of the strange encounter that happened that week...

Image shows a woman’s body from the neck down reflected in the open glass fronted door of a wardrobe full to bursting of her late mother’s clothes.

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · Aug 6

I still don’t think I will ever recover my way of posting stories as a call for response as I used to enjoy so much - but our exchange today, has, yes, been a good reminder of the best of these places. Thank you again.

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · Aug 6

I posted on here for the first time in many months - a short little piece about being moved by the sight of my and my husband’s work wear hanging on the kichen door - and it’s delighting to have received this soulful text & image threaded response from photographer @johnmacpherson.bsky.social...

John MacPherson @johnmacpherson.bsky.social · Aug 6

Ah such wistfulness, I understand. I stumbled into somewhere that had been that place, but now had gone beyond that and in its defeat was profoundly moving:

'Lost Lives'

I was doing a documentary photography project on remote and overlooked Hebridean islands. 1/1

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · Aug 6

…on Twitter from 2016 til it became so dangerous. Instagram, & a free writing project open to all on Substack in its good days of 2021 to 2023 before it went downhill fast. Then lost heart with the algorithms, missing the real & good exchanges that used to happen for me online. You’ve restored hope!

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · Aug 6

John! The images you made and how you’ve written of it here… I can’t fully express how much it has moved me. The experience, the art of how you’ve conveyed it. But also to have such a rich response to my first shy post in a very long while. I used to be such a happy, unguarded presence online...

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · Aug 6

Hello dear you. It was at the end of last month, 24th July, but I’m in a quiet noticing mood today because this time last year I was far away & alone in my mother’s empty home, clearing it a full year after she died. Much love to you as always. xxx

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · Aug 6

When I went to come back down later, I was moved, terribly, by the sight of the two women's art smocks hanging together, still intertwined, and decades after the bodies that wore and warmed them were gone. For the rest of my time there I no longer felt scared to be alone in their left-behind life.

A photo of two early twentieth-century tan-coloured painting smocks hung on a bare wooden wall, one inside the other. The outfits belonged to artists and companions Stella Mary Edwards and Judith Ackland who made their summer home for decades in the tiny cliffside Grade II-listed Artists’ Cabin at Bucks Mills North Devon. Image made by writer Tanya Shadrick when she was in residence there for the National Trust in 2018.

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · Aug 6

All the women's cups, art materials & household goods were as left decades ago, even down to a rusted nutmeg grater hanging by the stove.

I’d been there for days before I dared to go upstairs and close the door behind me. I was cold & needed a rest from visitors but found the upper room unsettling

Photo shows an old mercury mirror - degrading and giving off poison - that sits on the mantelpiece in the upper floor of the tiny cliffside Grade II-listed Artists’ Cabin at Bucks Mill North Devon. Image taken by writer Tanya Shadrick when she was in residence there for the National Trust in 2018

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · Aug 6

The condition of being resident at the Artists’ Cabin - as well as to welcome in visitors and make my own art there - was to move about the tiny two-room space without breaking or moving anything...

An interior from the tiny Grade-II listed Artists’ Cabin at Bucks Mills North Devon, taken by writer Tanya Shadrick when she was resident there for the National Trust in 2018. Photo shows the cups, plates and other fragile remains of the cabins’ original owners the artists Stella Mary Edwards and Judith Ackland.

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Tanya Shadrick @tanyashadrick.bsky.social · Aug 6

Years ago now, I was once artist-in-residence for the National Trust in a fragile Grade-II listed artists’ cabin on a steep North Devon cliffside at Bucks Mills: the summer home for many years of two lifelong companions Stella Mary Edward and Judith Ackland...

A steep path leads down to a tiny cliffside cabin to the left of the image. Beyond it to the right you can see blue sea stretching out. This is the Grade-II listed artists’ cabin once belonging to painters and companions Mary Stella Edwards and Judith Ackland at Bucks Mills North Devon.

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