solmōnaþ [i was born in the mud month], 2026

Audio installation and letterpress prints

solmōnaþ [i was born in the mud month] is a creative writing and sound project by Sam Godfrey as part of their Ronald Duncan Stipend for Southwest Writing Award, 2025 – 2026.

The work was created in response to Ronald Duncan’s 1964 play O-B-A-F-G: a play in one act for stereophonic sound, and his 1969 poetry and sound collaboration with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop on The Seasons (from the BBC Radio School Series Drama Workshop). Both these creative works explore very different topics; O-B-A-F-G imagines the birth of matter and the universe, using scientific understanding and methods to counter religious beliefs. The Seasons imagines the cyclical movement of the months and seasons as anthropomorphic encounters, set to the experimental sounds that the BBC Radiophonic Workshop was renowned for.

Both texts, however, highlight an attitude towards the environment that was very much of its time period, and I was struck by the tone of the words used which implied an ecological anxiety or anguish. This was further compounded by reading Duncan’s many autobiographies, and I was especially interested to explore any potential relationship between his creative work and his frustrated attempts at farming and acquisition of land in the Welcombe area.

My aim was to use his words as a starting point to rethink the entangled relationship between the local land, plants, and the sea, and to bring in plant mythology and wider ideas of non-linear and deep time.