Silvestris

£10.00

AUTHOR: REBECCA FIELD

The landscape makes time-travellers of us all. Ritual landscapes, especially, carry a weight of prolonged significance that we are hardwired to notice. Silvestris explores the intersection between the wild, the ancient, and the made, as it unearths the histories and mythologies that lie beneath the topsoil at one such site. Centred around a prehistoric ritual complex at Uley in rural Gloucestershire, this debut collection captures moments of the site’s history from the Carboniferous to the Anthropocene, considering the relationship between humanity, the stasis of place, and the movement of time. It re-animates the finds uncovered from the multiple excavations across the complex, imagining the voices and the stories of the people who lived, worked, and worshipped here.

“Sometimes a place gets in your bones, and stays.”

Silvestris is part of our 2025 chapbook series, emerging from the older tradition. Chapbooks were traditionally printed and sold between the 17th and 19th centuries and took the form of a small printed booklet, usually containing a selection of poetry or fiction. The aim was to make literature affordable and accessible. You can read more about them here.

This A5 chapbook is printed in the UK on 100% recycled paper using vegetable-based inks.

AUTHOR: REBECCA FIELD

The landscape makes time-travellers of us all. Ritual landscapes, especially, carry a weight of prolonged significance that we are hardwired to notice. Silvestris explores the intersection between the wild, the ancient, and the made, as it unearths the histories and mythologies that lie beneath the topsoil at one such site. Centred around a prehistoric ritual complex at Uley in rural Gloucestershire, this debut collection captures moments of the site’s history from the Carboniferous to the Anthropocene, considering the relationship between humanity, the stasis of place, and the movement of time. It re-animates the finds uncovered from the multiple excavations across the complex, imagining the voices and the stories of the people who lived, worked, and worshipped here.

“Sometimes a place gets in your bones, and stays.”

Silvestris is part of our 2025 chapbook series, emerging from the older tradition. Chapbooks were traditionally printed and sold between the 17th and 19th centuries and took the form of a small printed booklet, usually containing a selection of poetry or fiction. The aim was to make literature affordable and accessible. You can read more about them here.

This A5 chapbook is printed in the UK on 100% recycled paper using vegetable-based inks.

 


About the author

Rebecca Field is Research Fellow in Medieval Literature at the University of Cambridge, where she writes mostly about mysticism, manuscript illumination, and medieval soundscapes. She has a lifelong fascination with history and archaeology, which consistently bleeds over into her creative practice, whether that be poetry, fiction, or medieval miniature painting. Her poetry is deeply inspired by echoes of the past in the wild landscapes she traversed as a child. When not writing or painting, she can be found dancing the 5Rhythms, growing vegetables, or, ideally, rambling in the hills.