{"id":26632,"date":"2025-01-14T16:54:58","date_gmt":"2025-01-14T16:54:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/?p=26632"},"modified":"2025-01-14T16:54:58","modified_gmt":"2025-01-14T16:54:58","slug":"five-poetry-books-to-inspire-your-winter-wanderings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/arts-social-sciences\/five-poetry-books-to-inspire-your-winter-wanderings\/","title":{"rendered":"Five poetry books to inspire your winter wanderings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whether you love poetry or are new to it, dip into the collections suggested by <\/em>Dr Wanda O\u2019Connor<\/em><\/a>, Lecturer and Staff Tutor in Creative Writing at The Open University. These books can help us explore the way we live and respond to nature, enhancing our walks and rest stops along the way. As poet Philip Gross writes, the forest has been \u2018waiting for us, all this time\u2019. Wanda singles out a few companions:<\/em><\/p>\n


\n<\/em>1. The Commons<\/em><\/strong>, Stephen Collis, (published by <\/strong>Talonbooks<\/strong><\/a>, 2008)<\/strong><\/h3>\n

In this collection Stephen Collis invites us to be architects of our own wandering, where:<\/p>\n

\u2018we walk a line
\nerasing it as we go\u2019<\/em>.<\/p>\n

He writes of poet John Clare, a Northamptonshire peasant poet, who was compelled by his separation from family to walk 80 miles home from his private asylum at Epping. Clare:<\/p>\n

\u2018returned home out of essence
\ntill daylight and fell<\/em><\/p>\n

down on a flint heap\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

He later talks of how Clare sampled the hearty grasses along his way:<\/p>\n

\u2018myself eating the grass
\ntasting something of bread\u2019. <\/em><\/p>\n

Collis also refers to 17th<\/sup> century Wigan-born textile trader Gerrard Winstanley who fought alongside others to resist land enclosure. Winstanley believed that:<\/p>\n

\u2018the earth was made to be a common treasury of relief for all.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

Alongside other voices of the common people \u2013 known as the \u201cDiggers\u201d, Clare and others upturned newly installed fences to reclaim \u201cthe commons\u201d:<\/p>\n

\u2018their lakes too many to name\u2019. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

2. Dart, <\/em><\/strong>Alice Oswald, (published by <\/strong>Faber<\/strong><\/a>, 2010)<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Oswald gives voice to Devon\u2019s River Dart, opening at Dartmouth and spilling into moorland. Dart<\/em> is not unlike a person, where the poet suggests:<\/p>\n

\u2018all voices should be read as the river\u2019s mutterings\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n

This river is active and thriving, full of fish and welcoming wild swimmers. Oswald asks the river walker to notice their own \u2018lines and the rhythms of their speech\u2019<\/em> as having the \u2018syntax of the river in them\u2019<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Moving upriver, the poems explore the reeds and banks, the \u2018one step-width water\u2019<\/em> that spins and splits and mends. Dress accordingly, \u2018wear green for the sake of kingfishers\u2019 <\/em>and explore the river\u2019s personality in the \u2018real Dart\u2019<\/em>, which:<\/p>\n

\u2018writhes like a black fire, smelling of fish and soil
\nand traces a red leaf flood mark
\nand catches a drift of placer gold in her cracks\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n

3. Winter Migrants<\/em><\/strong>, Tom Pickard (published by <\/strong>Carcanet<\/strong><\/a>, 2016)<\/strong><\/h3>\n

From sea to summit, Pickard roots through the North Pennines searching for raptors and that quintessential instinct to inch closer to the \u2018moth eaten\u2019<\/em> and \u2018threadbare\u2019<\/em> clouds, with Pickard\u2019s forms:<\/p>\n

\u2018spun across
\na bullish moon\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n

His is a world of slips and misses, as one might spy an elusive bird and think it \u2018the same bird, always ahead of me, just out of sight<\/em>\u2019. Pickard invites us to \u2018enjoy the gloaming\u2019<\/em> of field and estuary, where:<\/p>\n

\u2018the edge of everything is nothing
\nwhipped by wind\u2019<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The poet embraces Solway Firth\u2019s \u2018fast cold Atlantic wind\u2019<\/em>, mapping his own heart against the brace of gale:<\/p>\n

\u2018my heart, the cartographer, charts<\/em>
\nto the waterline,
\n<\/em>is swept back as the tide turns<\/em>\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n

One can pause for reflection in these poems, holding to the purpose of each \u2018measured step\u2019 <\/em>of the journey:<\/p>\n

\u2018when a mind seeks
\nto know itself
\nthe last place it looks
\nis the body\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n

4. Footnotes to Water<\/em><\/strong>, <\/em><\/strong>Zo\u00eb Skoulding, (<\/strong>published by <\/strong>Seren Books<\/strong><\/a>, 2019)<\/strong><\/h3>\n

From the culverted River Adda in Bangor, Wales to the Bi\u00e8vre \u2013 a lost Parisian stream, Skoulding beckons readers to observe at \u2018eye level\u2019<\/em> how water moves, patterns, and \u2018undoes us\u2019<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\u2018Not a trace but the same line writing itself
\nover and over again\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n

These poems move between cityscapes and the sea exploring everyday views, as in the poem Gull Song<\/em>: \u2018we came further in gathering your waste in our plastic beaks we are rhythm distributed in space\u2019. <\/em><\/p>\n

Skoulding presents the charismatic gull \u2013 showing patterns of decline in nature, as the \u201cleftovers\u201d: \u2018we are just too much and we live in the too much of the takeaway\u2019<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The poet asks us to take time for what has come before \u2013 \u2018the dried up rib of a river\u2019<\/em>, and to observe how \u2018water takes the quickest route\u2019<\/em> or \u2018gets caught on the surface\u2019<\/em>.<\/p>\n

5. A Fold in the River<\/em><\/strong>, Philip Gross and illustrated by Valerie Coffin Price (published by <\/strong>Seren Books<\/strong><\/a>, 2015)<\/strong><\/h3>\n

This beautiful book features illustrations by Coffin Price where images and photographs are overlain by handwritten phrases. Gross\u2019s poem Five Takes on the Taff \u2013 <\/em>featuring the River Taff that flows north from Cardiff with fish like \u2018sinewy dreams\u2019<\/em> heading \u2018upstream home to Merthyr\u2019<\/em>, playfully situates the river as \u2018wide skirt[ed]\u2019<\/em>, with:<\/p>\n

\u2018many petticoats
\nof catchment round her\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n

Gross vividly shows us the river\u2019s start, the \u2018carbon \/ swamp-forests\u2019<\/em> fixed \u2018in a black seam like fossilised lightening\u2019 <\/em>that asks us for pause to be \u2018in the grip of it\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n

Join Gross in noting slopes and hillsides \u2018losing its grip, dissolving inwardly\u2019,<\/em> and listening closely for the \u2018constant ripple of applause come from the shingle-shallows\u2019<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Main picture: Nejc Kosir for Pexels<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whether you love poetry or are new to it, dip into the collections suggested by Dr Wanda O\u2019Connor, Lecturer and Staff Tutor in Creative Writing at The Open University. These books can help us explore the way we live and respond to nature, enhancing our walks and rest stops along the way. As poet Philip […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":26634,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,3],"tags":[809,869,1525,1640,1738,2521],"class_list":["post-26632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-literature-music","category-arts-social-sciences","tag-english-and-creative-writing","tag-fass","tag-news-home","tag-ou-home","tag-poetry","tag-the-great-outdoors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26632"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26641,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26632\/revisions\/26641"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}