Sinking Feelings

Bogs have always captured the human imagination, inspiring both fear and fiction. Between the Ears wades into this treacherous netherworld in a search for the lost and found.

These liminal spaces have a unique and troubling consistency: neither absolutely water, nor absolutely earth, but a potentially dangerous mix between the two.

Writers have long been fascinated by the dangerous pull of the bog but also by the secrets that lay buried the peat, from 'The Slough of Despond' in John Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress' to Seamus Heaney's 'Bog Poems'

Producer Neil McCarthy and author and former rock climber Jim Perrin attempt to cross a bog called Waun-y-Griafolen in Snowdonia. A living entity, the bog erases paths over time and the duo's navigation becomes as uncertain as the ground beneath them. As they make their way, and as the days fades, they are accompanied by the reflections of Hetta Howes ('Transformative Waters'), Karin Sanders ('Bodies in the Bog'), and artist Mark Daniels who also finds he's strayed from the path.

They squelch their way, hoping to understand the bog's contradictory nature before getting swallowed up.

Featuring the poem 'Bog Queen' by Seamus Heaney

Original composition and sound design by Phil Channell Produced by Neil McCarthy