Poet Clare Crossman created a sequence of illustrated poems on nature and climate change for an appearance at Pivotal Festival in 2016. Here, she offers a short introduction and the first half dozen, including In the Blackthorn Time.
1,400 words: estimated reading time: 5.5 minutes
In the Blackthorn Time and other poems is a collaboration with multi-media artist Victor Ibanez. The poems are concerned with the state of the land and the natural world in the South Cambridgeshire countryside close to where I live. Recently, through volunteering with Melwood Conservation Group, I became very interested in climate change through contact with Bruce Huett, a member of the Climate Histories Group at Cambridge University. These poems were first performed at a small Pivotal Festival concerned with climate change, run by James Murray-White over a weekend on the site of the Cambridge Museum of Technology. The poem A Triolet was recorded also at The Empty Common Community Garden Party run by Michelle Golder with Transition Cambridge, as part of the climate change movement in Cambridge.
The remaining six poems from Clare Crossman’s collaboration with Victor Ibanez feature in her second post, Naturalist.
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I first ‘met’ Clare through her post reflecting on William Blake’s poem, London, which she contributed to the Finding Blake site I set up with James Murray-White and Linda Richardson. Since then, I have developed Clare’s new website for her poetry and I’m working on a new site for Waterlight, a creative environmental project she’s launched with James Murray-White, Bruce Huett and others, exploring her local river, the Mel, in Cambridgeshire.
Clare Crossman’s pamphlet Landscapes won the Redbeck competition in 1997 and since then she has published three collections of poetry, Going Back (Firewater Press, Cambridge), The Shape of Us and Vanishing Point (Shoestring Press, Nottingham). A third collection Common Ground is due in autumn 2018. Her poems have appeared in many anthologies. She performed and wrote Fen song: A Ballad on the Fen in 2006 with the singer-songwriter Penny Mclaren Walker.
Victor Ibanez trained in Fine Art at Art School in Kent. He has worked in graphic design, advertising and television. He is currently a member of Cambridge Art Salon and has facilitated many arts events during The Romsey Festival, in the Mill Road and Romsey areas of Cambridge, in collaboration with Ruthie Collins at Art Salon and Nick Hall at Vinopolis. Victor runs a regular life drawing class. You can see more of his work at his Facebook page.
The Window, The Pear Tree, The Violets, A Triolet, Marmora Road in Summer, and In the Blackthorn Time are the first six in Clare’s sequence of collages with Victor. The sequence is completed with Gold Finches, Naturalist, Cabbage White Butterfly, June at Docwra’s Manor, Solstice and Burlton’s Farm (contained in Clare’s next post, Naturalist), and all twelve collages are for sale. The collection is framed and available for exhibition display on request. You can contact Clare via her website.
A Triolet was included in a short film by Jonnie Howard about the first Pivotal Festival in Empty Common, Cambridge. Goldfinches was commended in The Barn Owl Competition, Devon. The Window was recorded for Fen Song A Ballad of the Fen. And Clare reads a number of these poems and others in The Pear Tree, a film by Victor Ibanez, which you can find at his YouTube channel.
A poet with a background in theatre, collaborations with an illustrator and a songwriter, and practical and creative engagements with local landscapes and nature. Read More
Writer and artist Salli Hipkiss shares an extract from her novel’s manuscript — a glimpse into the heart of the story and its forest, and further into the development of character, meaning and writing for the ‘We Generation’.
2,560 words: estimated reading time 10 minutes
In her first post in this two-part series, My Voice in the Climate Change Crisis, Salli explored her motivation for setting out to write The Riddle of the Trees as a creative work on climate change.
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The Riddle of the Trees
Jeanie left the light and shimmer of the hilltop views behind her. The track curved northwest and soon she was enveloped in the cool, cushioning shade of the forest. Among the trees the sharpness of the light and the edgy whine of insect-sounds softened into a diffused hum.She followed the track through the Treefarm until she reached a junction.She knew the way well.Her route home took the neatly-kept right-hand track south through the Treefarm towards the town, while on the left two crumbling stone pillars were all that remained of an ancient gateway, and an overgrown path led into the heart of the old-growth forest: the wild place known as the Olgro.
The evening humidity was making her breathless and she stopped at the gateway, leaning her bike against one pillar.A large, moss-covered stone had long since fallen from the gateway making an impromptu seat. She sat down, pulling a bottle of water from her rucksack.While she drank she looked back into the Treefarm. The rows of managed pines and beeches stretched sedately into the distance. The trees seemed cool, quiet and orderly; but also quiet in terms of diversity, of life, of spirit.Jeanie turned to look through the gateway into the Olgro.Sitting here at the junction, the contrast between the two parts of the forest could hardly have been greater.
Have you ever been to an Olgro? An old-growth forest? A truly ancient old forest?A forest that has never been cut or cleared: where for thousands of years there have been trees at various stages of growing up, growing old, dying, or slowly sinking back into the earth to become nurseries for new sapling trees?
Have you been to a forest where the numbers of different species of plants and animals and insects and fungi are so great that new species are constantly being discovered even after centuries of scientific study?Where the different life forms have lived alongside one another for so long that insects have begun to look like flowers and flowers like the insects that feed from them?Where the contrasting scents of honeysuckle, damp moss, rotting wood, tang of fox, and a metallic mix of ozone and ore, constantly assault and allay your senses in equal measures?
Have you stood in a forest with your ears full with the fizz and hum of insect flight, the creak and rustle of giant trees in endless movement, and the staccato chatter of numerous birds?Where before long you can’t help but find yourself falling back into the steps of an ancient dance that has been going on, unbroken, for millions of years?
Jeanie let her eyes wander, flickering between the trees, plants and flowers on the other side of the gateway: seeing them tumbling over one another, winding around one another, or even growing up through one another.She measured trees supporting ivies taller than the tree itself; lianas draping themselves between branches; ferns and epiphytes growing in the crooks of trunks high above the moss-dampened forest floor. It looked chaotic but Jeanie knew from Gramps that it represented a harmony of the highest order.
Or it had done… Jeanie scanned the rich texture of the forest again, her eyes narrowing. As she looked more carefully she felt her chest tighten and something shift beneath her ribs. Something was wrong.Her heart began to thump, sounding a warning. Gramps was right. The trees had changed.She closed her eyes to listen to the subtle pulse of the forest, searching for an explanation or even an adequate description. But she couldn’t find one, just a strong intuition that all was not as it should be.Opening her eyes, thoughts began to form. On many trees the leaves had a certain transparency.A frailty.A ghostliness even.
Suddenly she knew what this was.It was what Gramps had feared the most.This was Disintegration.
Following on from my previous post about the writing of my manuscript for the young adult audience, I was encouraged by ClimateCultures to share an excerpt from the story.After deliberating, I decided upon the above passage from near the beginning of the book.I could have ‘cut to the chase’ (for there is a chase of sorts in the story!), but for a story like The Riddle of the Treesit feels more appropriate to give a glimpse into the heart of the story.
In The Guardian in 2015, Patrick Barkham, quoting from Matthew Oates’ book In Pursuit of Butterflies, wrote:
‘Environmentalists desperately need poets and storytellers, Oates contends, because ultimately conservation is concerned with “mending the relationship between people and Nature”. Science may clarify priorities “but the whole show is essentially about Love”.’
This love for the natural world is what motivates me to create work to inspire change, and it is what motivates several of the characters in the story.It is also a reason for creating a novel as a vehicle for exploring environmental issues.This is an art form that allows for a broad expression of emotion: one that can take on love and joy, and also despair, frustration, anger, animosity and other emotions that difficult challenges like climate change can invoke.
I have always been interested in stories that follow several characters with similar, if not equal, weight, and in writing The Riddle of the Trees I gave myself this challenge. Quickly, within a few chapters, the book establishes that we are following not one, or even two, protagonists but several, forming a sort of holistic composite character.In creative work I like messages that run deeply, like the grain through wood, acting at the structural as well as superficial levels, and in my story there is a deeper meaning behind having a number of viewpoints, which is to illustrate this idea of holism: that we need diverse talents and insights from various quarters in order to ‘crack the codes’ to solve many of the world’s environmental and other problems.
Forest — a riddle for the many
At the geographical centre of the story are Jeanie, a lonely teenage girl, and Gramps, her forest keeper grandfather, who separately realise that a serious, mysterious ailment has befallen their beloved forest.In his 2004 book The Seven Basic Plots, Christopher Booker argues that most stories fit into one of seven structures.At first encounter The Riddle of the Trees might appear to follow the structure of a Quest, one of the seven plots Booker listed.The fierce love Jeanie and Gramps feel for the forest certainly leads them to undertake a quest to save the trees.However their quest is just one aspect of the story, and actually, if pushed, the plot better resembles a Comedy, not in the sense of a humorous piece, but a comedy in the Greek tradition, or one of Shakespeare’s comedies, in the spirit of A Midsummer’s Night Dream.As the title suggests, The Riddle of the Trees is threaded through with riddles, muddles and misunderstandings that need a combination of wisdom, wit, courage – and love – from a number of characters to reach a resolution.
Thus there isn’t one main ‘celebrity character’. The driving forces are care and compassion, even from the apparent antagonist who rather than being evil is instead mostly misguided and attempting to solve the forest’s disease and its potentially escalating problems by exercising greater and greater control, but at the expense of other freedoms.His power, his inflexibility, and his inability to listen to others’ advice make him dangerous.But he is not evil.
This distinction was important to me.When I first started drafting the story I had a wonderful discussion with a Japanese friend about the Japanese animation house Studio Ghibli and the sort of films that the house then created.My friend pointed out how the seemingly ‘bad’ characters in Studio Ghibli films were not ‘beaten’ by the good characters as they might be in a Hollywood movie, but instead underwent some process of transformation during which their frightening or dangerous power was dissipated.Often this was through their becoming properly understood where they weren’t before.For example, in Spirited Away, a witch figure returns to being a benign old lady, and a raging river spirit calms to a benevolent one when his polluted water is cleaned and he is called by his rightful name. This process of transformation and the possibility for redemption resonated with me and are further grains that run through the heart of the story.
The Riddle of the Trees is a story for young people about challenging the status quo, about following one’s own path and passions and conscience, and about forming friendships that transcend difference and constraint.
Reading again through the excerpt I have chosen above, I find myself bringing to mind the poem The Road Not Taken, published in 1916 by Robert Frost.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth… …I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
Rootedness
Jeanie in the story starts as ‘one traveller’ in another sense: she is lonely, and soon also carrying a burden of responsibility to solve a difficult mystery.However through the course of the story she and a number of other characters become newly connected and collectively are then able to solve some difficult problems.Although the novel is set in a future where mobile phones and social media are no longer ubiquitous, because young people live in a world dominated by these forces now I feel they will recognise the strong impulse to connect and form community — including globally — that lies at the heart of the book.
Perhaps the ethos of self-reliance and independence that Robert Frost was championing in his poem is no longer the prevailing ethos of the younger generation today.Reflecting on his famous ending line “… I took the one less travelled by / And that has made all the difference” it seems notable to me that the lines imply the difference made to one life only: the speaker’s own.
Instead, young people today, when asked what they want to achieve in life, will often answer: “I want to make a difference” meaning a difference in society, environmentally or in other altruistic ways.The millennial generation has been named the ‘We Generation’.They are much more aware than previous generations that in order to thrive as a species, as a whole planetary ecosystem, and also as individuals, we need to think in terms of interdependence rather than independence.This ‘We’ rather than just ‘Me’ way of thinking gives me hope for the future.
In Sharon Blackie’s thought-provoking 2016 book If Women Rose Rooted, Blackie comes to a similar conclusion about the need for a change from the prevailing myth of many generations, outlined clearly by mythologist Joseph Campbell in his 1990 book The Hero’s Journey.She writes:
“Campbell’s Hero’s Journey… is entirely focused on an individual’s spiritual growth and personal transformation – the process which Jung called ‘individuation’.But the journey we need to make today is one which rips us out of the confined spaces of our own heads and plants us firmly back in the world where we belong, rooted and ready to rise… We are not separate from this earth; we are a part of it, whether we feel it fully in our bodies yet or not… The Heroine’s Journey we need to make today is, above all, an Eco-Heroine’s Journey.”
In The Riddle of the Trees Jeanie and her various companions’ separate and collective journeys all lead to a common mission: to save the forest and restore harmony.To attempt this, all need to tap, like roots, into the groundwater of their own talents and passions and to offer them to the whole.Blackie continues:
“…And if we rise up rooted, like trees… well then, women might indeed not only save ourselves, but the world.”
In another wonderful book from 2015 The Moth Snowstorm, Michael McCarthy affirms:
“We should offer up not just the notion of being sensible and responsible about [nature], which is sustainable development, nor the notion of its mammoth utilitarian and financial value, which is ecosystem services, but a third way, something different entirely: we should offer up what it means to our spirits; the love of it. We should offer up its joy.”
For my part, I would be delighted if The Riddle of the Trees helped inspire a stronger feeling of rootedness, of connection with the natural world, an appreciation of its awe-inspiring beauty and ability to bring joy, and of what we stand to lose if we don’t care for what we have, while also engaging young people in a deliciously complicated but very heartfelt adventure story along the way.
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Our first post from Salli Hipkiss, in which she wrote about the inspiration behind her writing The Riddle of the Trees, was My Voice in the Climate Change Crisis. And Salli’s recent poem, Modest Things — asking how English poet, artist and radical William Blake might have responded to climate change and what examples we might take — is published at Finding Blake.
You can find out more about Sharon Blackie’s work, including her 2016 bookIf Women Rose Rooted, at www.sharonblackie.net And you can download a sample chapter from her publisher, September Publishing.
Joseph Campbell’sThe Hero’s Journey was first published in 1990, with a revised edition published by New World Library in 2003.
The full text of Robert Frost’s classic poem, The Road Not Taken, is available at Poem Hunter, where you can also hear a recording of the poem.
Michael McCarthy’sThe Moth Snowstorm – one of the three books reviewed in the Patrick Barkham article mentioned above – was published in 2015 by Hodder & Stoughton.
A writer, artist and educator, producing picture books, a novel and songs, with a background teaching and facilitating arts and sustainability with schools and communities. Read More
Artist Jennifer Leach shares another story she performed as part of Festival of the Dark’s micro-festival Dazzle. It’s a tale of transformation: stretching imagination, shifting vision as key to waking us up. What if the world were other?
790 words: estimated reading time 3 minutes
Yggdrasil, the Norse Tree of Life – from the 1847 English translation of the Prose Edda, by Oluf Olufsen Bagge Image: Public domain Source: Wikipedia (click image to link)
Last Thursday I went to visit my great 84-year old friend Anne Yarwood. For those of you who know RISC — the Reading International Solidarity Centre — she was the visionary who conceived it and brought it into being. After a cup of tea, we walked slowly out into her beautiful garden and sat in a small roofless shelter she calls The Lighthouse. We sat in amiable silence. And she then pointed to the vast forked tree under which we sat, and said, ‘I see her as the Earth Goddess. Those are her legs. Her head is under the soil.’ I smiled and nodded and we sat there imagining what life must be like for that tree deity there, under the Earth.
As we sat so, I began to undergo a strange transformation. It is hard to put into words exactly what happened. A transmogrification, a molten transformation, a morphing of being and consciousness. In some manner not understood, I was within the tree, with a discombobulating sense of slightness. Glancing over, I could see that it was so too for Anne. What we had become I do not know. Witchety grubs, tree fleas, I am still unsure. And this is what then happened. In the subtlest way possible, both our surroundings and ourselves began to change. In some way, we were carried down within the heartwood of the tree, moving from the Upperland into the Netherworld beneath the soil. It was a gradual process, with the light around us dimming first into gloaming, and then into darkness; the quality of the darkness intensifying until it began to emerge as an alternative way of seeing. Our power of vision slipped incrementally from the organ of the eyes to that of the nose; we began to perceive through smell. As we descended, the darkness crystallized into the pungent scent of loam. Dim pictures formed in our nasal passages. Pictures of roots binding one with the other, spreading infinitely as a vast heaven; fungus-studded caverns hollowing with the peaty brooks that licked the leaf-moulded netherworld. Shadowy movements of fellow creatures and organisms waving, shaking, scuttling, padding. An interchange of whistling, calling, creaking, clicking; the groaning of taproots scraping anchor in the depths, the low whistle of insect calling water, the trickling flick of water calling beetle. The bark of a badger, the drumbeating rhythm of a mole at work. As we tunnelled further and further more damply downwards, the scraping against soil shaft of our own bodies crackled and cracked, breaking back and across our vibratory receptors.
Time was measured in the crawling pace of our carapaces, days by vivid vibrations, nights by a gentle hum. All we were, Anne and I, were sensations. No thought. No memory. No perception. No projection. No wondering what existed beyond our very own skins. No wondering what existed within our very own skins. No wondering what might exist beyond the rhizome roof that marked the boundary of our world. No wondering even what might be the boundary of our world. We simply were. Anne and I. Some sort of witchety grubs in a darkness dappled world of root and leafmould sensation.
How the experience ended, again neither of us can be sure. We were sitting, in amiable silence, in the small roofless shelter Anne calls the Lighthouse. And she was pointing to the vast forked tree under which we sat, and was saying, ‘I see her as the Earth Goddess. Those are her legs. Her head is under the soil.’ I was smiling and nodding and we were sitting there imagining what life must be like for that tree deity, under the Earth.
Yet the sun was lower, the air cooler, with a hint of rain. We made our way slowly back towards the house. In companionable silence.
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Jennifer’s first story for ClimateCultures was What the Bee Sees. You can explore the Festival of the Dark, the Celtic cycle of the year and more at Outrider Anthems.
A poet, writer, performer and storyteller whose wild work, forged in the fantastical reaches of deep imagination, brings to life new stories for our strange times. Read More
Artist Jennifer Leach shares a story about bees, honey, hexagons and robotics. What the Bee Sees is the first of two stories Jennifer performed at the Festival of the Dark’s micro-festival Dazzle. What if the world were other?
This story is about bees, and honey, and hexagons. I am personally convinced that the very special nature of the hexagon is a key to the tale, and so here I shall begin. A hexagon, as I’m sure many of you will know, is a remarkable figure, with six identical sides, each one of which contributes to one of six indistinguishable equilateral triangles, each with three interchangeable angles of 60o; and with all six triangles converging on the one central point at the hexagon’s heart. If the hexagon’s neighbours are of the same dimensions, they can fit snug alongside, above, below one another, ad infinitum; a community of hexagons can be built by a child, so simple is it. Indeed a magical shape, and quite possibly it is the mystical nature of it that led to a quite extraordinary discovery about bees.
The tale begins at Reading University which, as some of you may be aware, has one of the most advanced robotics research departments in the world. Furthermore, its agricultural department has a research unit that focuses on bees. Ten years ago, these two departments came together with a shared desire to colonise a bee’s vision, to see — first hand — what a bee sees. I was lucky enough to know one of the researchers, from whom I received directly the following account.
To understand the science, it is important to appreciate the enormously complex make up of an apiarian eye. Altogether a bee has five eyes: two are a little like headlights, illuminating the bee’s path quite broadly; the remaining three filter light to create a great sensitivity of vision. Each of these eyes is made up of thousands of small hexagonal units called ommatidia. To see as a bee sees is no mean feat. As you might imagine, it was a work of engineering genius to create a small bee-sized helmet with five robotic eyes that could be clipped onto the head of a bee. It took nine years to develop, and was first ready for testing late last year. You might like to picture this helmet as akin to sunglasses, fitting over the bee’s own eyes yet not disturbing its sight. On 11th November 2017, in the research gardens of the agricultural department of Reading University, It was fitted to a bee we will call Bee A. As opposed to Bee B and Bee C who come later in the story. Remotely connected to Bee A’s cap was a commensurate cap known as the Bee Cap, which a designated researcher in the laboratory wore; the two were remotely connected. What this combination of devices allowed, in short, was for the researchers to share the vision of a bee. Or, as it turned out, to share specifically the vision of Bee A.
So, after recovering from its groggy little operation, Bee A went buzzing off on its normal busy business, as only a bee can do. After dancing around a few yellow flowers in the garden, sucking up nectar, unintentionally pollinating the neighbouring flowers at the same time, it flew off towards the hive. The researchers noted that it tends to see blues and yellows, and can also see the ultra-violet light that our human eyes cannot pick up. So far so good, confirming already known facts about the bee and its eyesight.
Next, Bee A flew into one of the hexagonal cells within the hive and this was exciting. Researchers had never previously had the privilege of viewing the inside of a hive cell through a bee’s own eyes. The light inside these cells is glowing and golden, rich and mellow as honey. The little bee fits pretty snugly inside, deposits its nectar, and works for a while producing enzymes to begin the honeyfication process. The expectation was, obviously, that it would then exit the cell the same way it came in and repeat the entire process. What happened next, however, was revelatory. And here I must ask you please for total confidentiality; this research is revolutionary, as yet unpublished, and must go no further than this website.
Instead of flying out the way it had come in, Bee A flew out the back of the cell. Unexpected perhaps, but here was the seismic shock: as it exited, the robotics researcher experienced a mind-bending, body-altering episode that has left him hospitalised. Electronically connected as he was through his Bee Cap to Bee A’s robotic eyes, he suffered a fragmentation of vision, a severe jarring of his eyeballs; he reported that every atom in his body seemed to condense into his heart area, and for around one second he was as dense and leaden as a lodestar. As he described it, ‘I felt as if the entire Universe had imploded momentarily within my own body.’
Incredible and absurd as it seems, scientists believe that Bee A had entered a pin-sized Black Hole, and even more incredibly and absurdly, passed through it unscathed. Whilst medical staff attended the unfortunate researcher, his colleague grabbed the Bee Cap, reestablishing connection with Bee A.
What she saw almost blew her mind. She was out in dark space aglow with a violet light that can only be described as celestial. Stars did not stud the heavens, they peppered it, millions upon millions of violet swirling stars moving in a diaphanous mist. There are no words for it. Literally no words. It is not a sight that belongs to our universe. And Bee A’s behaviour in this universe was not as on Earth. Its body stretched and elongated so that it became serpentine, streaming along on wings that needed to do no work. It floated, as if on an ocean, carried on an invisible tide that drew it along with directed energy. As it travelled, it appeared to be gathering nectar in its regular fashion. And the researcher noticed that its vision too had altered. Each ommatidium began to spin clockwise, so that the bee’s sight became a kaleidoscope of purple spinning hexagons. After a few seconds, she pulled the Bee Cap from her head, was violently sick, and passed out. By the time she came to a few minutes later, Bee A was back in its cell, and had deposited its otherworldly gathering of nectar.
On completing this task, the bee then fell into what seemed to be a trance. It lay so for several minutes. The robotic cap indicated that the bee was experiencing REM sleep, just as a human would. And then – extraordinarily – whilst still in this state of sleep, it flew out of the front of the cell, and went about its usual busy business in what we shall call, for shorthand’s sake, ‘our world’. As if in a dream.
It goes without saying that the immediate desire by the researchers was to follow up the experiment by trying out the same procedure on what we shall call Bee B. And later Bees C, D, E and so on. Over a period of three weeks they did this, collating the mindblowing evidence that suggests each bee, when it exits the back of its own cell, passes through the same nodal shift as did Bee A but each appears to go into ITS OWN UNIVERSE. (The researchers have learnt, it hardly needs stating, to remove the Bee Cap for the duration of this shift point). No two universes have so far looked alike. Each has its own distinct colour, form of motion, velocity, some are complex, others simple, some light, others more muted. Within its universe, the scale of the bee varies from diminutive to overly significant, and each bee moves about in its own fashion. Some ‘swim’, others roll, one vast bee stood upon its back two legs and walked. Each is, in its own way, utterly wonderful.
In all universes, all bees have one commonality, that of gathering nectar which, after returning back through the nodal shift point to the golden glow of the hive cell, they deliver to the collective. And here is what is, perhaps, most unexpected of all. The researchers at the university have of course closely analysed the bees’ honey, and the evidence is indisputable – no matter which universe the individual bee has collected its nectar from, and no matter by what method, the honey produced back in the hive is exactly the same.
A poet, writer, performer and storyteller whose wild work, forged in the fantastical reaches of deep imagination, brings to life new stories for our strange times. Read More
Poet Clare Crossman created a sequence of illustrated poems on nature and climate change for an appearance at Pivotal Festival in 2016. Here, she offers a short introduction and the first half dozen, including In the Blackthorn Time.
The Window
The Window
The Violets
A Triolet
Marmora Road in Summer
In the Blackthorn Time
‘Rooted’ Acrylic and pastel on canvas 
Puck’s Glen, Scotland.
Old Road, Yorkshire Dales
