Hen Harrier Poems is Colin Simms' fifth collection with Shearsman, and his third devoted to poems on a specific species, following Otters and Martens (2004) and Gyrfalcon Poems (2007). Future plans include volume devoted to poems on merlins and on goshawks. Simms is a naturalist who has observed the harrier and its North American cousin, the marsh hawk, for decades; his poems fuse a rich Bunting-esque diction and sonority with a focused eye and imagination.
An acknowledged classic of narrative nature-writing, Donald Watson's The Hen Harrier was the culmination of a lifetime's study of this beautiful upland bird. A gentle, warm and wonderfully written book, The Hen Harrier stems from an age of 'amateur' conservation, from the pen of a man who cared deeply about birds and their habitats, especially of the Scottish borders where he conducted much of his research and painting. The book was among the last of a dying breed; it would be thirty years or more before writing on our natural history would again reach the heights of accessibility to nature-lovers exemplified by Donald Watson and his peers. The book starts with Watson setting down more or less everything known about harriers – which at that time often consisted of information sent by letter to the author, rather than published in a journal – before moving on to the story of Watson's years studying nests in the south-west of Scotland. With a foreword by conservation champion Mark Avery, this edition of Watson's greatest work is particularly timely. The conflict between grouse-shooting interests, which has overseen the virtual extinction of the harrier as a breeding bird in England through illegal persecution, and an increasingly vocal conservationist lobby is the number one conservation issue in Britain today. Donald Watson's narrative soars like a sky-dancing harrier throughout this book. Read it, and be taken back to a simpler age of nature conservation by a true master of the art.
Completing the influential Oxford edition of Clare's collected poems, this volume presents the poems of the Northborough period of Clare's creativity. As with other volumes in the edition, many of the poems have never before been published, and Clare's spelling, punctuation, grammar, and vocabulary have all been carefully preserved. This final volume also includes corrections to the texts, variants, and notes in previously-published volumes in the series, along with a cumulative glossary and cumulative indices of first-lines and titles that will assist readers in their use of the edition as a whole. Clare's poetry deals not only with his own countryside, but also with its ceremonies and celebrations, its customs and games, its political, economic, and religious concerns, its proverbs, tales, and songs - indeed, with all aspects of its popular culture. The poems of the Northborough period are some of Clare's best work, demonstrating a particularly concise vision of Clare's experience of Nature.
"Pack soup, cheese and a copy of How To See Nature by the Bard of Wenlock Edge and Guardian diarist." John Vidal With a title taken from the 1940 Batsford book, this is nature writing for the modern reader. Evans weaves historical, cultural and literary references into his writing, ranging from TS Eliot to Bridget Riley, from Hieronymus Bosch to Napoleon. It is a book both for those that live in the country and those that don't, but experience nature every day through brownfield edge lands, transport corridors, urban greenspace, industrialised agriculture and fragments of ancient countryside. The essays include the The Weedling Wild, on the wildlife of the wasteland: ragwort, rosebay willowherb, giant hogweed and the cinnabar moth; Gardens of Light, about the creatures to be found under moonlight: pipistrelle bats, lacewings and orb-weaver spider; The Flow, with tales from the riverbank, estuaries and seas, including kingfisher, minnow, otter and heron. The Commons looks at meadowland with a human footprint, with the Adonis blue butterfly, horseshoe vetch, skylark, black knapweed and the six-belted clearwing moth. The author also looks at the wildlife returned to Britain, such as wild boar and polecats, and finds nature in and around landscapes as varied as a domestic garden or a wild moor. The book ends with an alphabetical bestiary, an idiosyncratic selection of British wildlife based on the author's personal encounters.
• Offers a broad yet detailed exploration of Lynette Roberts’s writing, encompassing poetry, prose, and radio broadcasts. It will thus benefit students and scholars by offering the knowledge base and theoretical starting points that they need in order to launch their own investigations. It will benefit teachers by offering a much-needed sourcebook on Roberts’s life and work. • Throws light on the interesting cultural relationship between Wales and Argentina. • Essays arranged in chronological order allow readers to trace the evolution of Roberts’s style in the context of British and Welsh social and cultural history. • It brings together the most recent and original research on Lynette Roberts since 2005. • Flags up Lynette Roberts’s wider relevance to Welsh/British literary history and key developments in literary and cultural studies.
