About

I’m Adam — poet, occasional essayist, leadership consultant by day. I live in Herefordshire, in the country between the Malverns and the Wye, where old orchards flood in winter and the buzzards work the field margins.

Beyond Solitude is where I think out loud — mostly in essays and poems, sometimes in something between the two.

The title needs explaining. I don’t mean solitude as a finished position — the man on the hill with his thoughts. I mean it as a place you pass through. Sat with properly, it opens onto something else: a clearer sense of which work is yours, a different relationship with the people who’ve stayed, a way of being in a place that’s closer to dwelling than to occupying. The Substack is named for what comes after — not the leaving, but the looking up.

I write a second Substack, The Cutting Room, (craft and diagnosis for poets).

What you’ll find here:

— Essays on landscape, friendship, work, weather, attention, the small mechanics of a life

— New poems, and the occasional draft, from the collections I’m building: What Storms Disclose, Root and Reckoning, Seed and Trace

— Notes from the Herefordshire ground — flooded orchards, the springs in the Malvern hills, the river when it runs high

I write in British English, with too many em-dashes, and a strong preference for the particular over the abstract. I read Heidegger when I’m stuck and Edward Thomas when I’m not.

I publish one post per week. In week one it’s ‘Nine by One’ — nine things I found, learned or enjoyed that week. In week 2, it’s an essay.

I read everything readers send. If something here lands, do write.

— Adam

To learn more about the tech platform that powers this publication, visit Substack.com.