Found Sound for May: Max Porter

As the Season Turns

Folk, Seasons, Folk Singer, Ffern, Arts, Society & Culture, Music History, Folklore, Fragrance, Seasonal, Field Recording, Folk Music, Music, Wildlife, Nature, Science

4.8 • 977 Ratings

🗓️ 15 May 2026

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For May, Alice travels to Bath to meet critically acclaimed writer Max Porter in a quiet woodland on the edge of the city, discussing how landscape shapes his work, the process of writing, and the interplay between the fantastical and the domestic. We hear Max reading from the ecstatic springtime piece he wrote for Ffern's recent film, 'This Wild Land'. Found Sounds are sonic scrapbooks of field recordings and interviews with people keeping heritage crafts alive. They are part of As the Season Turns, an award-winning podcast created by Ffern, makers of small-batch, seasonal perfume. To find out more visit www.ffern.co

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Fern podcast as the season turns.
0:13.6	I'm Leah Lane Derns, and I'm delighted to introduce this found sound for May,
0:18.7	presented by musician and sound artist Alice Boyd.
0:23.4	Found sounds are sonic scrapbooks of interviews and field recordings made with people
0:28.5	keeping heritage crafts and folk arts alive. For May, Alice travels to Bath to meet
0:36.0	critically acclaimed writer Max Porter, the novelist known for
0:40.3	works such as Grief is the Thing with Feathers and Lanny, whose writing often explores voice,
0:46.0	landscape and the more than human. Max recently collaborated with Fern and the rewilding
0:51.9	project NEP Wildland on This Wildland, a film featuring Claire Foy.
0:58.5	Alison Max walked through a quiet woodland on the edge of the city, discussing how landscape shapes his work, the process of writing, and the interplay between the fantastical and the domestic.
1:10.6	We also hear Max reading from an early draft of the piece he wrote for the film. You may wish to pause the podcast here for a moment, while you find somewhere warm and quiet, to close your eyes, sit back and settle down into this month's found sound.
1:40.7	Max, can you introduce yourself and describe your work?
1:49.0	Hello, I'm Max Porter, and I'm a novelist mainly, but I also do a lot with music and theatre, lots of collaborations with artists. I do a bit of teaching. I'm a writer in residence in a
1:54.8	prison which I really love doing. Yeah, that's me. And it's a lovely day in Bath. We're in this graveyard.
2:03.3	Can you describe where we are and what this place means to you?
2:07.3	Yeah, this is this incredible piece of ancient woodland, almost in the middle of Bath.
2:13.0	It took us five minutes to get here from the station.
2:16.1	We're in Smol Smallcomb Cemetery,
2:19.0	which is no longer an active cemetery,
2:22.6	but was up until recently a working cemetery.
2:24.4	It's incredibly peaceful.
2:25.1	We're in this valley,
	...

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