Featured Publication – Crossing Paths by Jean Atkin and Richard Skinner

Our featured publication for May and June is Crossing Paths by Jean Atkin and Richard Skinner, published by Black Cat Poetry Press.

“Written between December 2023 and July 2024, Crossing Paths is a collaboration between poets Jean Atkin and Richard Skinner, both keen walkers, both of whose work is informed by the natural world and the human experience of exploring it. The walks in the collection were taken separately, and in many different locations. They would each pass a poem across, then write a new poem in response.

The poems map landscapes from the Coast to Coast walk across northern England to the Berwyn mountains of Powys; from the ‘rock-hop tussock-clamber’ of Seefin in Cork to ‘the woollen stockings / of Kirkby Stephen’; from ‘paths scrambled to a spirit level’ near Aberfoyle to Cheshire, where you may ‘Wish now on Whistlebitch, for the lost wells, the dew ponds’. Crossing Paths is a book of poems about walking, place, nomenclature and nature.“

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The Providences of Langstrothdale Chase

Jean Atkin

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Space and Seefin

Jean Atkin

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Cloud Inversion Over Aberfoyle

Richard Skinner

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Ingleby Greenhow

Richard Skinner

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Jean Atkin walks with a notebook in her pocket, and is easily tempted away from the signposted path. Her third full poetry collection ‘High Nowhere’ (IDP, 2023) was nominated for the 2024 Laurel Prize and Coast to Coast to Coast published her winning Individual Poet Journal in 2025. She has previously published another eight poetry books, often dealing with place, nature and story. Her poetry has won competitions, been commissioned, anthologised, and featured on BBC Radio 4. Since 2010 Jean has worked as a poet in education and community, often in collaboration with other artists.

Richard Skinner is a walker and a writer, often at the same time. He has climbed the Wainwrights in the Lakes, the Cuillins on the Isle of Skye and Mont Blanc. In 2016, he switched to long distance walking and, since then, he has completed more than 20 long distance walks in the UK, including the West Highland Way, the Pennine Way and the Coast to Coast. Richard has published six books of poems. He is Director of the Fiction Programme at Faber Academy and runs poetry courses for the Arvon Foundation and Sarum College.

Copies of Crossing Paths are available to purchase from the Black Cat Poetry Press website, here. Signed copies may be purchased directly from Jean or Richard.