'Fur, Feather and Fen' by Elaine Ewart

Fur, Feather and Fen 

by Elaine Ewart 

'a year's poetic journey in the land of the three quarter sky: 

poems about landscape, wildlife and people, grown from the fertility of a thick dark soil.'

Cover design credit: © Karen Harvey

Fur, Feather and Fen, has just come out from FlightFeather Press as an exquisitely produced poetry pamphlet. It is the culmination of Elaine Ewart's year (2012-2013) as the first Fenland Poet Laureate. I first heard about the Fenland Laureateship from Karen Harvey, who initiated the scheme and designed the stunning cover for Elaine's collection. I have since had the pleasure of meeting both Karen and Elaine. I have also met Leanne Moden, Elaine's successor, who held the post from 2013-2014 and has just handed over to Poppy Kleiser.

Elaine, an Oxford graduate in English Literature, writes with a passion for her subject, handling words and phrases with consummate skill and consistently applying what Flaubert called le mot juste to achieve her ends. The collection opens with 'Drowned Lands', the poem that won Elaine the Laureateship. The piece also appears in Words for Wide Skies, the anthology edited by Elaine as part of her Fenland remit. The poem begins with the emotive word, 'Digging', which immediately took me back to Seamus Heaney and his poem about his ars poetica. It led me on from that rich Irish soil to Elaine's home turf, a place that is far more familiar, a fenland landscape scented with 'water mint' and filled with 'butter-billed Bewicks':

'Across the field banks hem in the horizon, sky hanging
Heavy over silver coin-puddles of squealing wigeon ...'

Much of Elaine's poetry is written in free verse, but there are also more formal pieces with regular rhyme and repetition schemes such as 'A Visit to the Guild Workshop', which comprises the first part of the sequence, 'Celebrating Octavia Hill'.  

In this pamphlet of poems that reflect the natural rhythms of the world on our doorstep, it is not surprising that we are transported through the changing seasons. The collection ends with

'Love in a manger,
Winter sun-crowned' 

in 'A Fenland Christmas', a commissioned piece that has been set to music by John Lawson Baker as an anthem for a four part choir.

Before we reach the festive season, however, there is just time to join the eccentric Parson Hawker on his beloved but treacherous Cornish cliffs for a poignant 'Harvest at Morwenstow', where, when it comes to the need for burial 

'... at this outpost of the eternal, 
No-one is given up for lost.'

* * *

Fur, Feather and Fen by Elaine Ewart can be purchased from the following places:

WWT Welney
Hundred Foot Bank
Welney
Norfolk
PE14 9TN

01353 860 711

Price: £4.50. Copies can be ordered by telephone and posted: please enquire from the seller about the added cost of p&p.

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Wisbech and Fenland Museum
Museum Square
Wisbech
PE13 1ES

01945 583 817
Price: £4. Please enquire from the seller about ordering by post and the added cost of p&p.

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Toppings Bookshop
9 High Street
Ely
CB7 4LJ

01353 645 005
ely@toppingbooks.co.uk

Price: £5. Please enquire from the seller about ordering by post and the added cost of p&p.

Publication Pointer ~ Glossy Ibis ... and Puffins

My previous post was about an anthology that will raise funds for WWT Welney, and, as it happens, my most recent poem to be published, 'Glossy Ibis near Welney', has just made The Box in the August edition of Reach Poetry, having been voted 4th in the readers' vote.

The Glossy Ibis is a bird that is still on my 'wish-list'. I had hoped to see one when we were on the lagoons near Pylos three years ago, but it was not to be.

Sunset: Yialova lagoons, near Pylos, Greece

Speaking of birds, my puffin poem, 'A Chink in the Sky', features in the August edition of FreeXpresSion from Australia. It seems a good excuse for a(nother) puffin picture ...

 ... or two!

Beautiful Birds (16): Beautiful Books

Proud Peacock!

The cold weather has brought some surprising birds to our attention. A Bittern (Red Alert status) was sighted at WWT Llanelli in Penclacwydd last weekend, though David failed to hear its haunting boom when he was there. I gather there had been a sighting before Christmas, too. A Bittern (possibly the same bird?) was seen at Crymlyn Bog on 5 January 2010: you can read about it on the Gower Wildlife blog, along with news of other feathered visitors to my area of South Wales. The Rare Bird Alert site informs us that Monday 4 January saw a Black Kite (link here: then scroll down a bit for an image) flying among the Red Kites in Powys, and a Glossy Ibis appearing in Worcestershire. Wow!

If birds and books are joint passions, take a look at the Abe Books Beautiful Book Boutique, which is currently showcasing 30 Beautiful Old Bird Books. The covers alone are worthy of a glance: my favourite design has to be Wise and Otherwise. Peacocks and owls seem to be the most prevalent species. I wonder which designs you like best.

Creature Feature (9): Dragonfly at WWT, Llanelli

I spotted this dragonfly at the WWT Llanelli a few days ago.
If anyone can identify it for me from this photo, I would be very grateful!

Poetry Matters (5): One Word Ripples

Saltmarsh: ripples and reflections
WWT Llanelli

Those who know me know that I love to experiment with poetry forms and unusual words. I read somewhere recently of a challenge to pick a single word as the starting point for a poem. I took this photo with my new camera (I am really quite a techophobe or technodunce, but again I love to experiment); and the ring of ripples in the centre, which you can enlarge if you click on the photo, has kickstarted a poem idea. In the past I have sometimes been helped by a spidergraph: I wonder how your poems develop? There must be a myriad of methods: I would love to list some of your answers!

Window on Wildlife (3): Orange Tip Butterfly

Male Orange Tip (Anthocharis cardamines) at WWT, Llanelli

I have seen Orange Tip butterflies before, but it was only over the weekend that I began to wonder whether the orange pigmentation only belonged to the male of the species. A look in my copy of 'The Butterflies of the British Isles' by Richard South confirmed this fact. The female butterflies, who have black and white wing tips, lay their eggs on the Cuckoo Flower (Cardimine pratensis, aka Lady's Smock), the pale pink plant in the photograph.

Beautiful Birds (6): A red star weekend

You have heard of a red letter day: well, this was my redstar(t) weekend!

Thanks to Mistlethrush, Matt at Polyolbion and other birding bloggers, I am slowly learning my 'A(vocet), B(uzzard), C(arrion crow)' alphabet of the world of birds.

We had great fun watching about three pairs of Redstart (I presume that is the plural: please feel free to advise!) in the grounds of Dinefwr Castle. I tried my best to photograph them; but (assuming my identification is correct), the Redstart does not hang about and my best photograph was blurry, to say the least. The birds flitted backwards and forwards in pairs, along the waterline and then up in the trees. The males, in particular, were a joy to watch, with their black 'cheeks', silver foreheads and bright russet feathers.

Down at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust in Llanelli, we saw and heard a number of warblers (and once again, Mistlethrush, I wish you had been there to help!). I should be particularly interested to learn the identity of the pair in the photo above.

Incidentally, I wonder what rules we follow in the UK when we write about specific examples of flora or fauna, using our English names. Do we adopt Seabrooke's sensible system of using captial letters for these words? I was writing about the Smooth Newt on my Land&Lit blog, when I realised that unless I used upper case it would not be clear whether I simply meant a smooth newt of any variety or whether I meant the Smooth Newt, Lissotriton vulgaris (formerly known as Triturus vulgaris), in particular.

There is a Swansea suburb called Sketty (Sgeti in Welsh); some sources claim that the name means Ceti's Island, after an Irish saint. Cetti's Warbler, however, is named after the Italian zoologist, Francesco Cetti. I am grateful to Matt of Polyolbion for reminding me to look out for Joanna Boulter's Arrowhead poetry collection, On Sketty Sands.

World Wetlands Day 2 February 2009

We had an enjoyable walk around the WWT Centre at Penclacwydd in South Wales over the weekend. You can look at three of my stars in the photographs above. We enjoyed watching a peregrine as it circled overhead. You can also see what other birds I saw out on the estuary and around the Lllanelli area by looking at my Birdstack (right column once you have clicked the livelink). Birdstack is such fun, and I now have my first Birdstack 'friend' (a bit like friends on Facebook).

The beautiful little egrets are so much a part of the Gower scene these days: I remember not long ago feeling that it was a red letter day if we caught a glimpse of one. Earlier today I blogged about Edgar Allan Poe: he was a master of rhyme and rhythm when he chose to be, and as I write this, lines from The Raven keep flitting through my head.

• World Wetlands Day 2009: Upstream, Downstream