Fevered Sleep, the arts company whose Artistic Director David Harradine we featured last week, have responded to this narrative of loss and change with an on-line artwork, launched today, called An Open Field.  Last week Harradine told NATURAL LIGHT "When I read the report, and understood the scale of loss of species and habitats, I wondered what this meant to the people who live and work in those places."

"We invited people from various locations to take a walk with our Associate Artist Luke Pell, he recorded the conversations, and we've turned the words into a poetic landscape.  It's an attempt to recreate the experience of walking in a real place but in a different form, an on-line form.” 

Pell found that ordinary and remarkable things were shared and revealed from those places, and from those people’s lives. Memories surfaced and changes were noticed. Each encounter carefully excavated years of detail, unearthing how deeply people know themselves in relation to the places where they live and walk.

The words on-screen at anopenfield.co.uk are the words of the participants, and the final artwork is a poetic expression of the conversations that happened through each encounter as they walked.  





An Open Field is launched today and is produced by Fevered Sleep.  Developed and led by associate artist Luke Pell.  Design by Valle Walkley. Made with the support of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

Neck of the Woods, for Turner-prizewinning artist Douglas Gordon is a retelling of the Little Red Riding Hood story.  It brings together an impressive group of talents: Gordon, the pianist Hélène Grimaud, actor Charlotte Rampling and the Mexican-born writer and film-maker Veronica Gonzalez Peña.

Gordon has worked with the piano before:  in The End of Civilisation, he set a piano on fire in the Cumbrian hills and filmed it burning.  Grimaud is a world-renowned pianist and only slightly less well-known as a wolf conservationist, having established a wolf conservation centre in New York State.   And Gordon is also fascinated by wolves, hence this Manchester International Festival commission.    

Gonzalez Peña’s script is, ostensibly, a version of the Red Riding Hood story: playing to a cultural fear of wolves and of evil -  not the depiction Grimaud would champion in her other life.  For many cultures the wolf is a positive, even heroic figure: contrast the reverence given by the American Indians with the loathing and fear imported from Europe by later Americans.  

Neck of the Woods, which opened last night at HOME in Manchester, is at one level a struggle between artistic licence and Grimaud’s conservation agenda:  how to make a balanced portrayal of a species in trouble when so much great art has been built around wolf myth and metaphor?

Hélène Grimaud personifies that struggle, while the other artists had no such dilemma.  A piece about the ecology of a keystone species that evokes powerful and contradictory feelings would be a tremendous creative challenge for someone, but Neck of the Woods turns out not to be that piece.

For Gordon and González Peña, it is firmly rooted in the tradition of myth-making, which, on balance, has not served the wolf well.   Rather than use art to illuminate and challenge perceptions, it seemed to me to take the easier route – to build on what centuries of ignorance have offered us many times before.  There is an ulterior agenda, for sure.  Gordon has stated that he wanted to show that “men are worse than wolves” thereby once again using wolves to set a benchmark for measuring others’ badness.

So Hélène Grimaud’s personal mission to right all the misperceptions about wolves, and their consequences for the species, has had to take second place. 

The best bit is at the very beginning.  Starting in complete darkness, we hear a recording of a man chopping down a tree.  The darkness forces us to listen intently to the man’s breathing and the cut of his axe.  Over what seemed like several minutes, his efforts grow more desperate, his chopping more irregular, and he seems on the point of giving up when the trunk starts to splinter, and it falls, leaves and branches creating a crashing crescendo, to finish with a subsonic thud that I felt in my chest.  Ninety minutes later this was how the piece ended, also in darkness.

In between, Rampling tells her story, blended with that of Little Red Riding Hood.  Waking from a nightmare about wolves, she takes us through the narrative a few sentences at a time.  She and Grimaud alternate a dozen or more times.  This is two one-woman shows, chopped up and performed in turn.  We hear Rachmaninov and some dark minor-key chords.  A few more lines of narrative and then, as interludes between fragments of text, mini-medleys of Bach-with-Schumann, Rachmaninov-with-Beethoven, Ravel, Chopin. 

Now and again the disembodied and chilling voice of Gordon hints at the real story.  Rampling has complete command of the pace of the narrative, and of her coldly traumatised persona.  Grimaud is, as always, in command of her material, and occasionally dazzles.  The Sacred Sounds Women’s Choir is effective in the dark, behind a black gauze curtain, with wordless vocalisations, and dimly-lit hand gestures in imitation of the wind-blown trees that haunt Rampling’s nightmares (and in which live wolves).

It is, in the end, a story about men (one man) and an evil worse than any wolf.  This is signalled often and early enough for there to be no shocking reveal.  The music is there to pace the narrative, to slow down what is always going to come.  The lighting and the occasional snow, and odd bits of ambient sound from Eno add a bit, but not much, to what is basically a showcase for two talented women and a story; just about the sum of its parts.

Neck of the Woods runs at HOME, 2 Tony Wilson Place, First Street, Manchester, as part of the Manchester international festival, until18 July.

The three participants were united by their anger.  Jeremy Deller is the artist whose six-room exhibition English Magic at the 2013 Venice Biennale included a painting of a giant hen harrier clutching a Range Rover.  As symbols of the unequal struggle between oppressor and oppressed, they were well chosen, not least because the painting was a direct response to Deller's anger at the news of the shooting of two hen harriers at the royal estate in Sandringham.

Presenter Chris Packham is well known for stepping into the firing line over illegal bird killing, on behalf of both hen harriers and migrant birds in Malta.  George Monbiot's assessment chimed with Deller's skillfully-wrought artistic response:  the only people who want hen harriers to go extinct are the landowners who have the means to make it happen, but no popular support.  The ones with all the popular support have no power to stop them.

The trio went on to critique Packham's own artistic efforts - good third year stuff according to Deller - and the role of the BBC and Sir David Attenborough in projecting the reality - or otherwise - of the threats facing the planet.  The programme is available on the BBC iPlayer, and well worth an hour of anyone's time.

As part of celebrations for its 25th anniversary, Plantlife has launched a poll to find the nation’s favourite wild flower.

One in five of Britain’s wild flowers is under threat and the vote is an opportunity to highlight their plight.  As with the concurrent election for Britain’s national bird, I have had no hesitation which gets my vote. 

The bluebell has previously been voted Britain’s favourite flower, and it’s mine, too.  But tactical voters should also vote bluebell.  While you can find them in neighbouring countries, the classic bluebell wood is almost uniquely a British sight.  Between a quarter and a half of all the world’s bluebells are found in Britain and Ireland.

However, during my recently-completed two year secondment in North Norfolk, I found a significant acreage of bluebells in the Snettisham area that was contaminated through hybridisation with the rampant Spanish bluebell.  It is a problem reported from most parts of Britain.  The Spanish species is a garden favourite which readily escapes into the wild.  It is more invasive and more vigorous than our native species, and hybrids even more so.

I have found that whereas the common bluebell takes around three years to flower from seed, a Spanish bluebell plant will flower in its first year, so the rate at which the native plants can be genetically swamped is frightening.  Whatever your views on non-native plants’ “right” to grow wild, the fact is, the common bluebell is more beautiful, more scented, and more part of our cherished woodland landscape than its paler, more rugged-looking cousin.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow's premiere of my Skydancer, a short piece written for the London Contemporary Chamber Orchestra. 

It's at 7.30 on Saturday at St.George the Martyr, Borough High Street

Today is National Poetry Day and for the next three days ZSL London Zoo is hosting its first ever annual poetry weekend, exploring the power of nature and wildlife in poetry.  Special events include a poetry trail around the zoo grounds, workshops and readings.  

Four contemporary poets are featured on Saturday lunchtime.  Fiona Sampson, is editor of Poem magazine, former editor of Poetry Review and has been nominated for the T.S. Eliot Prize and Forward Prize for her own work. Her most recent collection of poems, Coleshill, offers a “stunning engagement with both sensation and locale, and perhaps most importantly the rural environs in which much of it is rooted.”  Pascale Petit was featured on this site a few weeks ago and is the author of six collections of poetry, including Fauverie (Seren, 2014), The Zoo Father (Seren, 2001) and What the Water Gave Me: Poems after Frida Kahlo (Seren, 2010), shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize, Wales Book of the Year, and named as a book of the year in the Observer. Ruth Padel is a renowned poet and non-fiction author, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, of the Zoological Society of London and a member of the ZSL Council. Her poetry collections includie Soho Leopard (Chatto, 2004)  and The Mara Crossing (Chatto, 2012), as well as the novel Where the Serpent Lives (Abacus, 2011). 

Niall Campbell is a poet originally from South Uist in the Western Isles. He received both an Eric Gregory Award and a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship in 2011, winning the Poetry London Competition in 2013.  His pamphlet, After the Creel Fleet, was released in 2012 by Happenstance Press, whilst Moontide, his first collection, was published by Bloodaxe earlier this year.For the inaugural ZSL Poetry Competition the theme is conservation. The competition is open to all ages but entrants must enter in their age category.

The inaugural ZSL Poetry Competition theme is conservation. The competition is open to all ages and closes Sunday 12 October 2014.

Passionate about the natural world, obsessive about using images from nature to paint the darker side of human nature.  NATURAL LIGHT caught up with French-Welsh poet Pascale Petit ahead of the launch of her sixth collection, Fauverie.  A series of launch readings begins next week in Norfolk, taking in events as diverse as London Zoo’s first ever Poetry Weekend and the Resurgence and Ecologist Festival of Wellbeing.  
(See What’s On for full details)




Petit was taking time away from her home in London and back in her native Paris on a writing retreat, so we agreed to converse by email on this occasion.  I’d read that Fauverie is inspired by the big cat house of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris and celebrates the ferocity and grace of endangered animals.  But I wanted to check my understanding: whereas her fourth collection, The Treekeeper’s Tale, displays an intense feeling for nature in its own right, the new collection invokes nature metaphorically, to tackle the darker aspects of human nature. 

“Yes I think that’s fair. The natural world is my passion, but my subject has often been my parents and human nature. I’ve written two books about my father (The Zoo Father and Fauverie) and one about my mother (The Huntress) and I’m working on another sequence about my mother Mama Amazonica.  So I guess on the one hand there’s my passion – the natural world – and on the other my obsession – to write about my strange parents.”

I’m keen to know how – indeed if -  Pascale separates these two very different ways of viewing nature;  or  is it a single, much more complex relationship? 

“I write intuitively and don’t analyse much as the poems come but I do know that when I write about the natural world just for its own sake it makes me happy. I also think that it’s harder for me to do that successfully. 

“When I write about my parents it’s not because I think anyone’s interested. As Sharon Olds has said, no one is interested really, why should they care? What I’ve tried to do with my father is to turn him into two books (he was an absent father), so I have these two books instead of him, and in them I deal with the evil things he did, and I change them by bringing in the natural world, especially animals, so that the recreated father I end up with is one I love, because he’s all these amazing animals. 

“It is a complex relationship. I am fascinated by the primitive and ferocity. I’m very drawn to Amazonian animals in particular, though others that are fierce, such as snow leopards and North China leopards, do it for me too. How could they not? North China leopards are especially savage and hard to keep in zoos, they keep their fierce natures and snarl a lot!” 

Why Amazonia?

“My fascination with Amazonian animals, anything Amazonian actually, the plants and peoples too, came from two trips I made in the Venezuelan Amazon in the 1990s. I went in 1993 and 1995, just two years before my father contacted me. I hadn’t heard from him for 35 years! So I visited him in Paris as he was an invalid, dying of emphysema. I took time out from those claustrophobic visits to go to the Ménagerie zoo in the Jardin des Plantes where I discovered there were many Amazonian species. So those two things – the Amazon and my father – became intertwined in my mind. I found I could only write about him through those animals. I read everything I could find about the Amazon, the flora and fauna, the landscape, its tribes, their rituals, and especially their mythologies and spiritual lives. When I started writing my second book about my father, Fauverie, I avoided going to the zoo and concentrated on Notre-Dame and the city of Paris, but I soon broke my veto and started going there more than ever, almost every day!”

Pascale Petit’s previous collection What the Water Gave Me:  Poems After Frida Kahlo, was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize.   Reading dates for Fauverie are listed in the What’s On section and start on 19 September at the Wymondham Words Festival.

Today is Hen Harrier Day.  Much is made of the so-called glorious twelfth, the start of the grouse-shooting season.  People can make their own minds up about the self-evident fact that if you want to eat grouse, grouse have to die.  But this year Hen Harrier Day, two days before the start of the grouse season, has been convened to celebrate and mourn the beautiful hen harrier, the legally protected bird of prey that also has to die to bring grouse to your table, and as a result is almost extinct in England.

Hen harrier day is marked by four major events and one minor one.  At 10 am there will be a thunderclap (I added my tweet but don’t ask me to explain how it works) and throughout the day people will be gathering at three beautiful locations:  South Tyne Trail at Lambley near Haltwhistle to create and assemble a ‘selfie trail’, the Upper Derwent Valley, Derbyshire, but this is now fully subscribed, and the Forest of Bowland, Dunsop Bridge, Lancashire.  More details here.

The minor event is me posting the score to Skydancer off to the London Contemporary Chamber Orchestra who give its premiere in October (see What’s On).  It’s a short piece that tries to capture the bleak landscape of our heather moorlands and the bouncing, dancing flight of a pair of skydancers – the other name for hen harriers.  That’s also the name of an RSPB project to raise awareness of their plight and highlight the public support this species enjoys, even in grouse-shooting hotspots where a tiny minority threatens the future of this symbol of the British uplands.

Hen Harrier Day sees us launch an occasional series of features and blogs linking uplands, rivers, and sea, that will run through August, September and October.

Martha being, of course, the last of the billions of  passenger pigeons that inhabited North America until a few decades before she died in Cincinnati Zoo a hundred years ago this year.  My former RSPB colleague Mark Avery has written a book about Martha, her super-abundant ancestors and her message to those prepared to heed the warning of where today's mass bird declines might lead.

So I was fascinated to read in Mark's blog, taken over briefly by Bay Area musician Karla Kane, about a song Karla and her band the Corner Laughers have written in honour of this sad centenary.  She mentions another track dedicated to the critically-endangered California condor, which she studied for her masters; and a glance at their website reveals a lot of music inspired by birds.

The comments on Mark's blog mentions Texas-based band Shearwater, co-founded by another ornithologist, Jonathan Meiburg.  Indie-pop and Indie-rock being a little outside my normal universe (no sniggering at the back of the orchestra...), I'm wondering what else I'm missing out on and whether there is an eco-rock genre out there. Recommendations welcome!