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Listen to Sam's poem and soundscape through soundcloud below:

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"we come respectfully
or not at all
cutting off to return home quickly"

solmōnaþ [i was born in the mud month] is a creative writing and sound project created by Sam Godfrey as part of their Ronald Duncan Stipend for Southwest Writing Award, 2025 – 2026.

The work was created in response to Ronald Duncan’s 1964 play O-B-A-F-G: a play in one act for stereophonic sound, and his 1969 poetry and sound collaboration with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop on The Seasons (from the BBC Radio School Series Drama Workshop). Both these creative works explore very different topics; O-B-A-F-G imagines the birth of matter and the universe, using scientific understanding and methods to counter religious beliefs. The Seasons imagines the cyclical movement of the months and seasons as anthropomorphic encounters, set to the experimental sounds that the BBC Radiophonic Workshop was renowned for.

Both texts, however, highlight an attitude towards the environment that was very much of its time period, and I was struck by the tone of the words used which implied an ecological anxiety or anguish. This was further compounded by reading Duncan’s many autobiographies, and I was especially interested to explore any potential relationship between his creative work and his frustrated attempts at farming and acquisition of land in the Welcombe area.

During this project, I was able to use the Ronald Donald archive in the Special Collections to read his autobiographies and his correspondence regarding the two works. I was also able to listen to the vinyl record of The Seasons, as well as access the stage notes and plans for O-B-A-F-G. The archive held the original galley proofs of the play which inspired me to think about letterpressing the poem to replicate these long pieces of paper. I was able to work with Double Elephant Print Workshop in Exeter to letterpress copies of the poem using a blind embossing technique, in which the type is pressed into the paper without ink.

My aim was to use these items in the archives as a starting point to rethink the entangled relationship between the local land, plants, and the sea, and to bring in plant mythology and wider ideas of non-linear and deep time. Duncan’s works focus on the linearity and inevitability of time, landscapes and matter, but I wanted to frustrate and reimagine this.

"with you
at my back a silver lamp
shining out against a bruise
of trees"

The poem in the piece is divided into three parts; the first is an ode to a specific snag tree, the second to the ferns I found everywhere whilst staying in Welcombe, and the final part is dedicated to the land of Welcombe (and Devon) itself. Snag trees are dead or dying trees, but their disintegration is integral to the wider ecosystem around them as they continue to offer shelter, food and contribute nutrients to the ground. I wanted to challenge the idea of death as final or severe, and instead as a generative process of change. Intrigued by the ferns in the area, I ended up learning about how some ferns do not follow linear models of evolution but can modify their leaves to ‘evolve backwards’ as part of their reproductive process. I also delved into folktales and mythology surrounding ferns and Cornwall, especially the idea that they hold powers of invisibility and were collected at midnight on Midsummer’s Eve. The final section hints at an entanglement of queerness with Devon’s geological foundations and the ghost of Duncan himself. It evolved from staying in Welcombe (in a building formerly owned by Ronald Duncan), and walking around the coast, fields and surrounding areas whilst thinking about folds in the rocks as interacting pockets of time. The title of the poem takes its name from the Anglo-Saxon name for the month of February (my birth month), referring to pre-modern knowledge and ritual practices that connected people to the land.

The soundscape is composed from a mixture of field recordings and archival sounds (taken from the BBC Sound Archives). During my stay in Welcombe, I recorded sounds from buildings and properties lived in and owned by Duncan and his family, alongside sounds from the sea and coast. These have been processed, distorted and mixed using Ableton software to create a soundscape in response to the work created by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

"triassic corners leak sand
into the graveyard
each brick dreams of coral"

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Find out more about Sam's work on their website

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Information:

solmōnaþ [i was born in the mud month], 2026
(audio, 14’06)

Poem and soundscape: Sam Godfrey

Sound collaborator: Jack Perkins

Letterpress support: Jeremy Speck, Double Elephant Print Workshop, Exeter

Vocal recording: Julian Schenk, Le plage des nudistes Studio, Berlin

Archive and project support: Caroline Walter, Head of Heritage Collections, University of Exeter

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This project was made possible thanks to the support of the Ronald Duncan Stipend for South West Writing.