You were never more lost than you are now, if you cannot reach out, touch the wild earth and weep...”
Living wild on Dartmoor, a man eats only nettles. His body disappears; he learns to fly. He encounters demigods and eloquent trees. He is Nettle-Eater, crooked, arrogant, self-proclaimed bastard of the moor. This is his testament.
First seen in a previous version in Dark Mountain III, Nettle-Eater is a short, sharp prose-howl in the direction of genuine and magical wildness and an uncompromising love-letter to the wild places of Dartmoor. Hovering over the pages is the ghost of Milarepa, the Tibetan saint who - it is said - survived on a nettle-diet for seven years, achieved a powerful enlightenment and became Tibet's best-loved bad-kid-turned-good. Nettle-Eater is written to be read aloud as a prayer to the wild earth and a reminder to us mortals that our lives are short and on fire and that there is no better time to remember our essential nature than this instant, no better time to discard the masquerade of our civilised lives than now...
This Hedgespoken Press perfectbound third edition is litho-printed on 100% recycled paper in England by Calverts workers’ co-op, with gold ink on a Corona Evergreen cover and black ink on white inners. The cover illustration is by Rima Staines.
Dimensions: 4.2" x 5.9" (A6) - there are 32 inner pages.