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.

One celebrated as a pioneer ecological poet, feted as a fallen hero and one of the many artists whose voices survived though their bodies perished.  Another unknown in English-speaking lands and one of a handful of German war poets to be recognised as such.  Edward Thomas and Gerrit Engelke had poetry in common, and shared a country of last repose:  France.

In 1914 Engelke was gaining recognition as a poet of industrial Germany, with works that celebrated labour and the working man, cities and factories.  His poem At the Seashore seems uncharacteristic in its subject matter.  There is a machine-like rhythm to its lines and its rhymes, but it is perhaps a rare reflection on the vastness of nature and the wider world.  It is ambiguous as to whom it is addressed – to the sea itself, or to the author himself, or both.  Here we present the original and a new translation.

In 1908 Edward Thomas wrote “Man seems to me to be a very little part of Nature and the part I enjoy least. But civilisation has estranged us superficially from Nature, and towns make it possible for a man to live as if a millionaire could really produce all the necessities of life - food, drink, clothes, vehicles etc and then a tombstone."  It was to be another six years before he took up poetry – at the start of the war and a few weeks before enlisting.  He was to write a lifetime of poetry in the two and a half years before he was killed, and in writing works that had nature, rather than humanity, at its heart, became for later generations a pioneer ecopoet and a voice that will resonate for many today.

The Combe was ever dark, ancient and dark.
Its mouth is stopped with bramble, thorn, and briar;
And no one scrambles over the sliding chalk
By beech and yew and perishing juniper
Down the half precipices of its sides, with roots
And rabbit holes for steps. The sun of Winter,
The moon of Summer, and all the singing birds
Except the missel-thrush that loves juniper,
Are quite shut out. But far more ancient and dark
The Combe looks since they killed the badger there,
Dug him out and gave him to the hounds,
That most ancient Briton of English beasts.

Edward Thomas 

b. London, 3 March 1878   d. Arras, France,  9 April 1917

And wave comes and wave flees,
And the wind rushes his melodies,
Foam water plays around your toes -
Kneel down, wanderer, repose!

The sea washes o’er the sun on high,
And heaven’s flowers light the sky.
Which wave do you want to ride?
It will not always be a midday tide.

Roars a sea unto eternity,
Into silence, splendid, and mighty,
And no one knows how far you flow-
And if you reach your rest, or no

Life-long wanderer, you.

Gerrit Engelke

b. 21 October 1890, Hanover, Germany
d. Cambrai, France 13 October 1918

Am Meerufer

Und Welle kommt und Welle flieht, 
Und der Wind stürzt sein Lied, 
Schaumwasser spielt an deine Schuhe – 
Knie nieder, Wandrer, ruhe!

Es wälzt das Meer zur Sonne hin, 
Und aller Himmel blüht darin. 
Mit welcher Welle willst du treiben? 
Es wird nicht immer Mittag bleiben.

Es braust ein Meer zur Ewigkeit, 
In Glanz und Macht und Schweigezeit, 
Und niemand weiß wie weit – 
Und einmal kommst du dort zur Ruh, 
Lebenswandrer, Du.

Magic Oxygen Publishing - run by downshifters Simon and Tracey West - are running a literary competition that will raise funds for tree planting in Kenya.  Using sound ecological advice to avoid the pitfalls that afflict so many such schemes, they will plant a tree for every entry to the competition, which offers generous top prizes in poetry and short story categories.  So get scribbling!  Here's why...

...and here's the trailer...