Five Questions for... Tom Branfoot

We return to our series of short interviews with contributors and friends of Elsewhere with Tom Branfoot, whose essay 'Every Landscape Is Also That Landscape: Fields, Housing and Land Ownership in Britain' appears in our Trespass issue of Elsewhere. 

What does home mean to you?

Home to me is West Yorkshire. It means greenness and wildness, moorland, dear friends and great pubs. 

Which place do you have a special connection to?

The M62 is an enduring symbol of home. I have always lived nearby to it and when I first moved away, to university in Manchester, it was the route there and back. Each time I travel through it, returning or departing, seeing Rishworth Moor open up and the white permanence of Stott Hall Farm fills me with an unmistakable sense of belonging.

What is beyond your front door?

Beyond my front too is a wobbly bird feeder lodged into a patch of shared grass mowed periodically by the landlord. It would be pointless to plant anything, yet the floor is currently flecked with clover and the occasional bird’s-foot trefoil. Beyond that is a car garage which emits a continuous hum, and down the road is a patch of wasteland behind the church filled with written-off vehicles. 

What place would you most like to visit?

I would love to visit Bosnia and Herzegovina, Shetland and Cornwall, and have a trip planned to Swaledale. 

What are you reading / watching / listening to / looking at right now?

I am currently reading The Sky is Falling by Lorenza Mazzetti translated by Livia Franchini and Silk Work by Imogen Cassels. Caleb Klaces’ forthcoming novel with the mightily stylish Prototype, Mr Outside, is a triumphant balancing act between comedy and tragedy.

Tom Branfoot is a poet and critic from Bradford, and the writer-in-residence at Manchester Cathedral. He won a Northern Writers' Award in 2024 and the New Poets Prize 2022. He organises the poetry reading series More Song in Bradford. Tom is the author of This Is Not an Epiphany (Smith|Doorstop) and boar (Broken Sleep Books), both published in 2023. His poem ‘A Parliament of Jets’ is shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. Volatile, his debut collection, is forthcoming with the87press. 

You can read Tom’s essay for Elsewhere here.

Record Release: Outcrops, by Spaceship

An extended Trailer for the new Spaceship LP 'Outcrops', featuring excerpts from the tracks 'Whirlaw Stones (delta) and 'Bride Stones (glacier)'. Album available to order from www.wiaiwya.bandcamp.com

Listened to by Paul Scraton:

Spaceship is Mark Williamson, a musician and sound artist based in West Yorkshire, and today marks the release of ‘Outcrops’, a site-specific, haunting and melodic album that is not only inspired by the landscapes of northern England but was recorded there. The sandstone outcrops can be found above the town of Todmorden, and the album was recorded in place, with Williamson taking his synth up into the rocks to create the pieces encased in small caves. Each of the tracks on the album is named for its location and incorporates field recordings and found sounds, and was also created to evoke a particular phase in the geological history of the outcrops – Orchan Rocks evokes the Ocean, Bride Stones the Glacier and so on. This story is also lyrically told in the sleeve notes, describing the rivers as they “surged from the uplands,” the “peaceful, aquatic interlude between the ever-shifting chaos,” and the ice as it “plucked and scraped and tore at the land…”  

Crossing the Pennine hills a few weeks ago it came to me once again that how we interpret a landscape, how it makes us feel, is tied to what we know about it – the stories we have heard and what we bring with us as we approach it. The same can be true of works of art. What we know of the author or the painter, the musician or the photographer can shape our interpretation of a work, whether we want it to or not. The knowledge of how it was created feeds into our experience. I sit at my desk in Berlin and listen to the Spaceship album and I can picture the sandstone outcrops and the fields beneath the moors as behind the melodies I’m sure I can hear the wind blow and the birds call. Are they there? I’m not sure. But I know one thing: the next time I cross the Pennine hills the tracks from this album will echo. I have added to my collection, the one that helps me understand a place. The hills will be different somehow. That’s the power of art, the power of music. The power of storytelling, in all its forms.

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‘Outcrops’ by Spaceship is available on 12” and download, and is released on 24 May 2019 by wiaiwya.

Mark Williamson on twitter
Spaceship on soundcloud