Poetry in the Parks
She is the editor of ‘Poetry in the Parks’; A celebration of the 50th anniversary of the National Parks of England and Wales in Poems and Photographs, with a Foreword by Alan Howarth, CBE MP, Minister for the Arts, and introduced by Ewen Cameron, Chairman of The Countryside Agency.
‘Poetry in the Parks’ is a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the National Parks of England and Wales in poetry and photographs, including specially commissioned poems by some of the outstanding poets of this generation. Poems spanning centuries reflect the landscape’s enduring power to inspire. The subtlety and diversity of our National Parks is expressed through superb photographs and the sensitive words of poets that include William Wordsworth, U.A. Fanthorpe, Ted Hughes, Elaine Feinstein, Sylvia Plath, Douglas Dunn, Gerard Woodward, Mick Imlah, William Oxley and many others.
Foreword: “Enduring, diverse and inspiring – our National Parks and the poetry included here are all of these, but they also share the power to enrich our lives”. (Alan Howarth CBE, Minister for the Arts.)
Poems From This Volume
Snowdonia
Black on white, a roadside, a shock
of mountain rock: I am looking in
through a photo found in an Indian tin,
to a piece of forgotten history.
There on my father’s knee,
my hair cut like Clara Bow,
I can’t have been more than three.
Do I remember, or is it a dream
that the group of relations, resting
on stones, are exhausted to mutiny,
while my father continues to
urge us upward? My eyes
look shyly under my fringe
at whatever he wants me to see.
For a moment I imagine his voice:
‘The air, taste the air.’ And my throat
tightens, searching the square
of a black and white photo,
a band of ghosts, and a
mountain’s majestic glare.
by Elaine Feinstein
Pennine Country
In the beginning
God stuck his thumb-print
on these hills in peat, sour grass,
the ritual scourging by wind,
and then forgot.
Until the time
our fathers came,
dug-in on slaty scree,
performed their bloody-minded miracle,
conjuring drab towns out of mist,
and still survive in us.
Surely, some day
this doggedness will earn
a blessing,
the peat ooze fat,
the cold streams run wine,
and corn spring from the bare rock.
If not,
no matter.
We shall stick it out.
You can’t just sling your hook
when the wrong half
belongs to you
by squatter’s right
by John Ward
Millstone Grit
From sullen mounds of battered earth
it thrusts its fists at the universe;
millions of years of compressed dust.
A girl there waits, her lover climbs,
his warm breath on the crusted skin.
The spark the rock emits she’s seen
in his eyes in the evening light,
and wonders if the rock might too,
within its own great density, have love,
passed on from clay to flesh
as the fragrance of a rose is,
or the wild flower’s essence in a wood,
that would speak of love if an essence could.
by Wendy Bardsley
Eidyllon
The crags of Snowdon
cry in creaking wind –
does Arthur sleep within?
Bones of sheep
whiten the cwms.
The rocks of Tryfan sigh
in shrouding snow –
does Bedivere lie here?
Ravens rise
at Dinas Emrys.
And the waters of Llyn Llydaw
whisper to the shore –
does Excalibur rest below?
Samite fish
hide in the rushes.
by Gladys Mary Coles