MIGRATION & OTHER LOVERS 🐦‍🔥

an August Round Up

The Mowing-Devil (1678), or, the Earliest Known Depiction of a Crop Circle from The Public Domain Review

In This Missive:

• (Re)Reading: The Lover by Marguerite Duras

• Planning: An Equinox Outlier Hour

• Also Planning: This blog has migrated (again). Nothing will change for you, dear readers. I share my decision making process below.

Reading The Lover by Marguerite Duras.

Set in Mekong Delta when it was part of French Colonial Indochina, this book is a vortex swirling around a single moment: a girl gets into a stranger’s car. Everything leading up to that moment and coming after it circles this central point, switching the narrative from first to third and back in a sleight-of-hand of shifting perspectives. I read this 30 years ago as a younger woman and I saw a terrible mirror in this coming of age story. In the parlance of our times 'I felt seen'.

Rereading this book I now see that it's a document of colonialism and patriarchy and the relationship between the two.

A formative text and a masterwork of autofiction. I am learning French so I can read it in the original (and read Colette and Helene Cixous.) This book has haunted me, and returned to me with an urgency—an antidote to taboos and market-driven rules currently surrounding fiction.

Have you read The Lover? What did you make of it?

You can find other round up reads at my bookshop.org affiliate page.

Planning: The Equinox Outlier Hour

Sunday, the 21st September, 7pm BST.

On every Sabbat I hold a wee online meeting of community, camaraderie and creative practice. Sometimes there are prompts for writing, drawing and discussion and often I bring a reading to share. Monthly, It costs less than a single fancy coffee! Why not join us? As always, this isn't a formal ritual but a gathering of minds and hearts, open to all paid subscribers.

🗓️ We'll meet Sunday, the 21st of September at 7pm-8pm BST.
🔗 Zoom link for paid subscribers is under the cut at the very end of this post.
💌 RSVP to by sending me a message. Or email contact.allysonshaw@gmail.com to let me know you are coming.

🕰️ Find out what 7pm BST is in your time zone here.

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I’m migrating back to Substack, and here’s why.

First let me say: THANK YOU for continuing to support artists and writers, regardless of the platforms they are on. 💜

Nothing will change for you, my subscribers! The weekly newsletter might look a little different but I have taken care of everything else. You don’t have to do anything.

While I still foster the hope that we can shape healthy community online together, finding the right place to do that is challenging.

My blog is a lifeline. I live with multiple chronic illnesses and an energy limiting condition. The hours of productivity I’m graced with must be used optimally. The admin around tending my online spaces must be minimal. In the last four months I have spent countless hours creating work-arounds for limitations arising in Ghost. It’s detracted from my writing and has become a source of stress.

I would love a platform not owned by bad men, but to remove myself from every place owned by a reactionary oligarch would mean I disappear completely.

It is with much deliberation that I have decided to return to Substack. This is not a ‘forever’ solution—no platform promises that kind of home.

Thank you for sticking with me as we navigate these challenging times together. Being on Substack means I have more time and more ways to sharing engaging work with you.

For anyone wanting the details of my decision making process and the myriad issues I have had with Ghost I can share that at a future date.

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