J A Baker revisited

Leicester poet Roy Marshall, whose excellent chapbook Gopagilla is out now from Crystal Clear Creators, has very kindly chosen my poem Variations On A Theme By J A Baker for his Favourite Poem of the Week column.

He's also provided a link to an article about Baker, who's something of a hero of mine. I've actually just been reading Conor Jameson's excellent Silent Spring Revisited, which starts with his discussion of whether Baker was in fact seeing escaped falconry birds as well as wild Peregrines (we published a version of this in Bird Watching last year). Far from diminishing Baker's achievement, Conor puts Baker's extraordinary work into the context of an era in which modern conservation movements were just emerging, after the massive numbers of bird fatalities caused by unrestricted use of pesticides.

So, read Roy's blog, read Roy's book, read Conor's book, and read Baker.