A Walk to the Paradise Garden

My eight page feature on Roy Harper is the cover story on this month’s Wire magazine (issue 329, July 2011). The interview was conducted over a couple of days and Roy was kind enough to host it at his home in West Cork. Here is an exclusive virtual tour of the amazing landscape he has planted and built with his own hands in the grounds of his house. It is an idyllic creation, and makes a fascinating counterpoint to the more Edenic aspects of his music – you could almost see it as an organic song inscribed in the landscape...

“The Blackcap sings and the forest rings

The nettles tall around me...”

“With shafts of sun and moving things...”

“... And poems fast and slowly...”

“And fantasies of luscious thirst

For new lust and fresh waters to seek it...”

“Like diamonds set in realities...”

“Of skies drawn back in secret.”

Roy Harper, “Commune” (From Valentine, 1974)