A World Away from Everything
Friday was a glorious day spent with friends at the wonderful Jupiter Artland, just outside Edinburgh and a world away from everything. It is a place where, on every visit, you find something new, or see something familiar differently.
We wandered through the woods and happened upon Temple of Apollo by Ian Hamilton Finlay. We compared it with photographs my friend had taken on holiday; she now has her own set of comparative photographs, and we left our small offering of worship.
I could feel the tiredness in Tracey Emin’s I Lay Here For You and relate to its sense of waiting: of being held within the strange space that waiting creates.
The piece that moves me every time is Laura Ford’s Weeping Girls. I feel the need to hold the figures and feed them, in equal measure with repulsion and suspicion. The proposed thumbnail image cannot begin to do justice to the power of the work.
Wandering back towards the courtyard in search of more coffee, we found the pool. Joana Vasconcelos’s Gateway is something we will book for a future visit. It is stunning and, naturally enough, the water was very tempting — it was warm.
Nearby, a water feature reminded me of Paul McCartney’s “We All Stand Together”, known to generations of parents as the Frog Chorus. Anyone who raised children twenty to twenty-five years ago may already have it playing in their head; anyone who has never heard it can listen here.
I also had the chance to speak with the people in the MAKE Studio, who were creating swans from bits, bobs and glue. The finished birds will be sited at Charles Jencks’s Cells of Life, a landscape I can walk through barefoot and know by feel as much as sight. Sometimes I stand still and experience it with my eyes closed. I do, however, have to resist the urge to say “Tubby Custard”. Anyone who raised children twenty to twenty-five years ago will understand.
One of the swans is called Persephone, and it felt right to share a poem from my forthcoming collection, Before. “Unyielding” is about the journey Persephone was forced to take, and how she came to own it — not only as a stolen daughter, but as Hades’ wife and co-ruler.
Shared here in honour of Jupiter Artland and the Persephone swan being created in the MAKE Studio.
Unyielding
from Before
Head bent towards the sweet perfume,
Pleasure found in beauty,
The flowers fell beneath her feet,
And she fell away from summer.
Her uncle waiting as she fell,
In the golden carriage,
And to the underworld she went,
Into the state of marriage.
The grief and loss destroyed the earth,
Taken, stolen daughter,
Returned, and life regains its form,
Hades’ wife and co-ruler.
© Suzane Donaldson, 2026
