Antony Owen at Snakeskin

The December issue of Snakeskin has two fine poems by Coventry poet Antony Owen – How To Find The Falkland Islands, and The Bombing of Beautiful Birds. The latter, you might notice, is 'after Matt Merritt, and I can only say that I'm proud and humbled to have in any way provided any spark of inspiration.

Much of Antony's work deals with war and its effects on both civilians, and the participants, and particularly how the latter are too often left to deal with their own trauma when they return home. I especially like those final two stanzas of the Falklands poem, but there's so much to like there.

You can read more about Antony's work as a poet (and peace activist) here – as you'll see, he was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for his most recent collection, The Nagasaki Elder.

A few years back, I was lucky enough to visit first the Falklands, and then Argentina, for work, in the space of 12 months. What struck me in both places was that, whenever the 1982 war was mentioned, it was not in terms of anger, or ongoing hostility, but simply with a deep sadness.

Conversations with Nick Cave

I am, I would have to say, a bit ambivalent about Nick Cave and his music. There was a time, around Let Love In, when I listened to him quite a bit. Looking it up, I've just noticed that not only was ex-Triffid Martyn Casey a member of the Bad Seeds by then, but Triffid head honcho David McComb also contributed backing vocals. But I can't say I've ever wholly gone along with the 'genius' tag he gets so often.

Still, that's irrelevant. This article in The Guardian is what I really wanted to talk about. Cave's responses to his fans feel genuine and generous, and I found this open letter to a grieving fan particularly moving.

I will have to go back and dip into Cave's back catalogue a bit, though. Given how prolific he's been, I've probably missed a lot.

Poetry in schools

Excellent piece here from Michael Rosen, on the teaching of poetry in schools, and how reducing it to a series of a yes/no answers not only does the poetry itself a great disservice, but teaches the children nothing and probably puts them off poetry for life. I was lucky, when I was at school, that we had English teachers who encouraged you to read a poem with an open mind – indeed, above all, who encouraged you just to read poems.

Declan Ryan on Hugo Williams

Interesting overview of Hugo Williams' Collected Poems here, in the Los Angeles Review of Books, by young poet Declan Ryan. Williams never really seems to quite fit in to any poetic school or movement, but I've liked his work ever since I first encountered it (a remaindered copy of Dock Leaves that I bought about 16 or 17 years ago). Billy's Rain is, as the article suggests, probably his best collection, but the Collected Poems is well worth a look.

Is contemporary poetry in "a rotten state"?

Late to the party with this, but apparently novelist Rose Tremain thinks modern poetry is crap, while poet Robin Robertson finds himself sitting in the appalled middle ground, between the polar opposites of "light verse" or "incomprehensible".

Well, you can have fun arguing about whether or not they're right, but it's the way the subject is approached that bugs me. With Tremain, it's the "Let's dare to say it out loud". She sounds like one of those middle-aged men who 'dare' to be politically incorrect, but of course she's not saying anything daring at all, just using the platform afforded her by a national newspaper to trot out the same sort of thing Jeremy Paxman and Stephen Fry have done in the past. And of course, she doesn't mention any of the poets she does approve of, whether contemporary or from the past, or indeed any of the contemporary poets that she has read to form such an opinion. So, all things considered, a pretty pointless comment.

In Robertson's case, it's the implication that the "middle" in which he finds himself is somehow the squeezed, obscured, ignored part of the poetry world, rather than the largest sector, and the one that encompasses the larger presses and the bulk of the media coverage. It's dominated, of course, by middle-aged white men like Robertson writing largely mainstream poetry (and I speak as a middle-aged white man writing mainstream poetry). What's the problem with hearing some different voices?

Arthur Merritt, 1940-2018

My dad, Arthur Merritt, died on November 1st after a long illness. He was a wonderful husband, father, father-in-law and grandfather to my mum, Verley, my sisters Rebecca and Hannah and myself, my wife Natalie and my stepchildren Charlotte and Jacob respectively. We said our goodbyes to him yesterday, but of course he will always be with us in everything we do. Of that, more in a few days.

At the funeral, Tennyson's Crossing The Bar was read. Now I don't think Dad was ever a great reader of poetry, but this (it's hard to reproduce the formatting here, so I've just included the link) struck just the right note, and had added significance because he was a proud native of Louth, Lincolnshire, from very near Tennyson's own home village. Rest in peace, Dad, we love you now as always.

Magma 72 reviews

In the new issue of Magma (No.72), I've reviewed new collections from Bobby Parker and Stav Poleg, and an anthology in celebration of WS Graham. I won't give away what I thought of them – you'll have to buy the magazine for that. It contains a lot of fine poetry, much of it around the theme of climate-change.

Looking back on Leicester's Shindigs

Jonathan Taylor has posted a short piece looking back at Leicester Shindigs, 2010-2017. It was a great pleasure to read there on several occasions, and an even greater one to attend regularly. I hope it will return in some form, but whatever happens, it did a great job of giving both new and established poets a regular forum, and huge thanks are due to Jane Commane, Matt Nunn, and Maria and Jonathan Taylor, who fronted it and did all the behind-the-scenes work that made it such a success.

Riverrun, by Alan Baker

Knives, Forks & Spoons Press are publishing Alan Baker's new collection Riverrun, a sequence of sonnets about the River Trent. As the blurb from Robert Sheppard says, Baker (a fine poet who deserves to be widely read) is following in a long tradition of poets taking rivers as their inspiration.

Full details are here, or you can read four of the poems at Stride.

TS Eliot Prize shortlist announced

The shortlist for this year's TS Eliot Prize has been announced – there are five debuts on the list, alongside the likes of Nick Laird and Sean O'Brien. It's good to see the judges including such a diverse range of work, although the list is dominated by the larger publishers, with a very notable exception – Fiona Moore's The Distal Point is published by the very wonderful HappenStance.

Oswald's Book of Hours

Litter has an interesting review of Steve Ely's collection Oswald's Book of Hours, from Smokestack Books. It's one that I'd really like to catch up with, partly because Ely's a very fine poet whose work I've enjoyed before, and partly because of the subject matter.

I just started reading The King in the North, by Max Adams, about Oswald, 7th century king of Northumbria and saint, reminding myself of what I've long forgotten since studying the period at university. The two books ought to complement each other rather well.

Robin Robertson in The Guardian

It's not really any wonder that the world of poetry is small and polarised when the likes of Robin Robertson take every chance they get to trot out the same old grumpy-old-man bollocks moaning about 'Instagram poetry' and the avant-garde, is it?

Robert Sheppard's Michael Drayton rewrites

I have Michael Drayton to thank for the title of this blog (see sidebar), so it's interesting to see that Robert Sheppard is engaged in reworking Drayton's entire sonnet sequence Idea, titling it Bad Idea. Lots of links there to other interesting work by Sheppard, too.

Does happiness 'write white'?

The other day, I came across this review of JL Carr's A Month In the Country. It's a novel (well, more like a novella) that I've loved for many years, ever since coming across a copy in Coalville Library, and Ingrid Norton does a wonderful job of capturing what's so special about it.

I like what she has to say about how Carr writes about happiness. Henry De Montherlant's oft-quoted aphorism 'Happiness writes white' (actually 'happiness writes in white ink on a white page') has some truth in it, of course, in novels, poems and song lyrics, but there are ways to avoid it. Carr, as Norton describes here, does just that. Interestingly, his other novels are often much more pessimistic in outlook.

But anyway, I'd like to hear suggestions of other writers, or pieces pf work, that avoid the problem De Montherlant identifies. Over to you...

Poets on climate change

Interesting piece here in The Guardian, as much for the science as the poetry, but Bill McKibben's point is a good one. he says: "This science is uncontroversial. But science alone can't make change, because it appeals only to the hemisphere of the brain that values logic and reason. We're also creatures of emotion, intuition, spark – which is perhaps why we should mount more poetry expeditions, put more musicians on dying reefs, make sure that novelists can feel the licking heat of wildfire."

More plagiarism

Poet Ira Lightman's Facebook page has this – perhaps the most bare-faced example of plagiarism that he has yet investigated. This time it's not poetry, but perpetrated by Steve Marshall of SNM Horror Magazine, who has stolen a bunch of Brett Graham's stories wholesale. Marshall's attempts to justify what he has done are ludicrous, and have no foundation in law. If you're a horror writer looking to get your work published, I'd suggest you avoid this vampire and his magazine like...well, like you'd avoid a vampire.

Forward Poetry Prizes

Some interesting and brave choices this year – as always I have some catching up to do with regards to reading most of the nominees. But congratulations to Danez Smith, Phoebe Power and Liz Berry (whose work I do know well and who is a very deserved winner).

Eyewear

Not sure this answers many questions, if I'm honest. Hmmm...

Dave Coates on Toby Martinez de las Rivas

Dave Coates' reviews are always worth reading, but this is even more thought-provoking (and no less well written) than usual. I have to say I really don't know the poetry of Toby Martinez de las Rivas at all, but Coates makes his case very well. I'll have to read around it a bit further.

Incidentally, wasn't the black sun a fascist and/or Nazi symbol?

Poet Tips

I'm not sure why I hadn't come across this site before (especially as I was following it on Twitter), but I had a look at Poet Tips at lunchtime today. Basically, you enter the name of a poet whose work you like, and it suggests some other poets that you might like to read.

The only match it suggests for me at the moment is Matthew Stewart (who I can recommend whole-heartedly), but of course it depends on viewers adding their own suggestions, so it will develop over time as new poets are added.

The Lord God Bird

Poet Laura McKee shared this song on Facebook yesterday, and I'm glad she did. Partly because it's a great song, and has encouraged me to seek out more from Stevens (I'd heard bits and bobs previously, but clearly not enough).

But partly because it also reminded me of the whole controversy over the existence or otherwise of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, the species being referred to. It's the subject of an excellent book, The Grail Bird, by Tim Gallagher, one of the men who claimed to have rediscovered the bird in Arkansas some years ago. He's also written Imperial Dreams, an account of searching for the related Imperial Woodpecker in the Sierra Madre in Mexico. If anything it's even better than the first book.

It's still hard to come to any firm conclusion about whether the Ivory-billed still exists, but I went on a birding trip with Tim once, and have no doubts about his sincerity. Nor can I see what he would have to gain by making up the claims.

But anyway, enjoy the song, and enjoy the books if you get a chance.

Two Orthodox Left-Armers

My last post reminded me that I have a two-part poem about Wilfred Rhodes and Hedley Verity – Two Orthodox Left-Armers – in Candlestick Press's splendid Ten Poems About Cricket chapbook.

Introduced by John Lucas, whose own poem is a highlight for me, it also contains work by the likes of Adrian Buckner, Hubert Moore, Norman Nicholson, Kit Wright, and John Arlott, the doyen of radio cricket commentators. Perfect for the cricket-lover in your life.

England's all-time Test best

Go down to the bottom of this story, and you'll see England's All Time Greatest Test Match XI, as voted for by BBC viewers/listeners/readers.

My first thought was that, as usual with these things, it's far too slanted towards current and recent players.

I can't see how Jack Hobbs and Wally Hammond could not be in there, if they were even half as good as their records suggest. And that's before you start wondering at the absence of May, Cowdrey and Compton - wouldn't one of them be worth a spot? And Ken Barrington? His test record was right up there with the best ever, and he had a particularly good record against the Aussies.

The bowling is a bit less contentious, but great as Swann was, was he really better than Hedley Verity, or Wilfred Rhodes, or Jim Laker?

On second thoughts, I suppose it's inevitable. No-one voting will have seen much of most of those players, so perhaps the real surprise is that Hutton and Trueman make the cut, presumably based mainly on their records and what voters have been told about them, rather than what they've actually seen.

So, I got to thinking, and compiled my All Time England XI, and then my Lifetime England XI, purely from players I've seen. In fact, I added a twelfth man for each, so that the captain would have a choice of playing one spinner or two. Here they are:

All Time England XI
Jack Hobbs
Len Hutton
Wally Hammond
Ken Barrington
Denis Compton
Ian Botham
Alan Knott (WK)
Fred Trueman
Hedley Verity
Sydney Barnes
Alec Bedser
Wilfred Rhodes (12th man)

Lifetime England XI
Graham Gooch
Geoff Boycott
Alastair Cook
David Gower
Kevin Pietersen
Ian Botham
Alec Stewart (WK)
Graeme Swann
Stuart Broad
Jimmy Anderson
Bob Willis
John Emburey (12th man)

In the first, it was a hard choice as regards the spinners, but Verity was reputedly the only bowler that Bradman felt he could never wholly master, so he gets the nod. Rhodes would offer flexibility as 12th man, given that as well as his bowling, he could bat pretty much anywhere. Compton and Bedser get in there because their records would be even better had they not played in weak sides for large parts of their careers (and because World War Two got in the way, too).

In the second, I went for Stewart as keeper because he was far better there than he was ever given credit for (and had a great batting record as well), and because I can't really remember Knott at his best. Matt Prior was unlucky, though.

Poetry and translation

Over at Poetry Wales, there's a very interesting review of Matthew Francis's The Mabinogi, which considers wider questions about translating medieval poetry and prose.

The reviewer, Eurig Salisbury, says: "Pointing out that he is ‘neither a Welsh speaker nor Welsh-born’, Francis admits he cannot ‘claim the Mabinogi as part of my personal heritage’. His brief pitch for validation, however, ‘in the sense that the greatest products of the human imagination are the heritage of us all’, seems rather glib. A lack of natural affinity with a language or a country certainly does not disqualify anyone who wishes to get to grips with its literature, but an awareness of the wider factors involved is key. In the case of the Welsh language, it is essential, for its position as a minority language in relation to dominant English in its own land warrants understanding in any form of cultural exchange.

"The fact is that Francis’s version is no translation – it is not described as such except in Gillian Clarke’s quoted review on the sleeve – but rather a retelling. It was based solely on a recent English prose translation, and a casual reader might be excused for failing to realise that the language of the original is still spoken."

Is that fair? The Armitage versions of medieval poems mentioned don't seem that different, to me, being closer to retellings than actual translations, although maybe the Heaney version of Beowulf is a bit different.

Robert Minhinnick wins Wales Book of the Year

Good to read that Robert Minhinnick's Diary of the Last Man, published by Carcanet, has won Wales Book of the Year 2018.

He's a poet who too often seems to pass under the radar outside Wales, but hopefully this volume is getting the wider attention that it deserves.

Review: Assembly Lines, by Jane Commane

Over at WriteOutLoud, there's this excellent review by Neil Leadbeter, of Assembly Lines, the first poetry collection by Jane Commane (who is of course also the driving force behind Nine Arches Press). It's out now from Bloodaxe Books.

There's plenty else to browse on the site, too – a poetry gig guide, profiles and blogs among them.

Redshank

And one more wader from Minsmere, the eternally nervy Redshank, although this one laid off with the alarm calls for a while to preen and sleep on a fencepost in front of one of the hides. They're a familiar sight on most wetlands, of course, but that doesn't mean that they're not worth a second look.

The balance between bat and ball

England's utter destruction of Australia in the 3rd one-day international at Trent Bridge on Tuesday (Richie Benaud would almost certainly have said "It's absolute carnage out there" at some stage during it), has sparked a lot of debate online and on Test Match Special about whether or not there needs to be some evening up of the balance between bat and ball in this format of the game.

The straightforward answer is yes. As Jimmy Anderson said on the commentary, if every game is a high-scoring big-hitting contest, it all starts to blur into one. Many of the best one-day games I can remember have been low-scoring, tense affairs. Derbyshire's 1981 Nat West Trophy Final win. India's 1983 World Cup Final win. And of course, the 1999 Australia vs South Africa World Cup Semi-Final – for my money the best one-day match ever played.

What's annoying, though, is that this only ever comes up when England dish out a hammering. Yes, the pitch was flat and favoured batsmen. Yes, the Kookaburra balls used gives bowlers no assistance whatsoever. But it's the same for both sides. Australia won the toss and declined to use the pitch when it was at its best for batting. They also bowled poorly, let's be honest, while England were excellent in the field. Adil Rashid and Moeen Ali showed there was something in the pitch for spinners – more fool the Aussies for picking only one frontline spinner, leaving out Nathan Lyon, their best option.

When, in the past, England's one-day side has taken thrashing after thrashing on flat pitches, the pundits have been quick to say that they need to find bowlers who can come up with something different on such surfaces. Now we have, and now we've found batsmen who can take the fullest advantage of such friendly surfaces, we're being told that the rules need to change.

Black-tailed Godwit

There were large numbers of Black-tailed Godwits at Minsmere RSPB, in all their breeding finery. Presumably these are birds that simply haven't made the journey to their northerly breeding grounds, although a few might also be failed breeders that have already returned. Whichever was the case, they were a pleasure to see – I love waders anyway, but these are among my favourites.

I do wax lyrical about waders in my book A Sky Full Of Birds – it's available to buy here, or you can use the email link on the right to get a copy direct from me (I'll even sign it if you like).

Spotted Redshank

Even by my standards, that's a pretty ropey pic, but it's the best I could do from long distance, craning over several people in a crowded hide. It's a male Spotted Redshank in full breeding plumage, so different from the way I have generally seen them in the past, in winter plumage.

Marsh Harrier

Also very much in evidence at Minsmere RSPB were Marsh Harriers. They're a common enough sight in the Fens close to our office, too, but it's easy to forget that 40 years ago, when I was just starting to get interested in birds, they were very rare indeed. Even now, there are fewer breeding pairs in the UK than there are breeding pairs of Golden Eagles – it's just that the Goldies are harder to see because they're in much more remote, inaccessible areas. But anyway, the return of Marsh Harriers are proof that organisations like the RSPB are making a real impact in some areas - we just need to start paying more attention to the habitat everywhere else.

Dartford Warblers

I was over at Minsmere RSPB in Suffolk earlier this week, and also managed to have a look at some of the smaller reserves nearby. At Westleton Heath, I heard and then saw four Nightjars. Having waited until it was almost dark, I'd pretty much given up hope that they were present, and then all started 'churring' at once, before they started to fly over the heath, with their white wing flashes standing out in the murk, and their 'wing clapping' loud in my ears.

The next day, I went back to see what might be around in daylight (I'd been told Turtle Doves were a possibility). No such luck, but Dartford Warblers were plentiful and were showing very prominently atop the gorse and other bushes. They're not great photos (as ever), but these were the best views of the species that I've ever had in the UK. Good to see that the Beast From The East earlier this year didn't hit them too badly – I'd heard that Cetti's Warblers in the area had been pretty much wiped out.

Liz Berry and Jane Commane at Ledbury Festival

Ledbury's always full of excellent poetry, and this looks like one of the highlights of this year's programme. Two great poets whose work carries a distinctive Midlands flavour (and there's been far too little of that over the years).

There's lots more to enjoy there, too - have a browse here.

Nebraska

Pitchfork publish regular reviews of what they consider significant albums of the past, and last week it was the turn of Springsteen's Nebraska.

At the time it came out in 1982, I would have been absolutely oblivious to it, but I did buy it not long after I got into Springsteen, around 1987. By that time, the muted initial response it had received had begun to dissipate, and various other artists had started to imitate its ultra-stripped-down approach. To be honest, that became a bit annoying – recording everything acoustically on a cassette player doesn't automatically confer integrity, depth and meaning on an album.

But for Nebraska, it was undoubtedly the right decision. Even though the recordings are so homepsun that at times you can hear Springsteen's chair creaking, the effect isn't to create an intimacy with the listener, but rather, as the article says, to isolate the artist from his subjects, allowing him to observe and report dispassionately.

Songs such as Highway Patrolman and Atlantic City are like short stories (the former was the inspiration for the film The Indian Runner), but in many of the songs here, what's not said is as important as what is. You don't know exactly what it is that the protagonist of Atlantic City has agreed to do, just that he's desperate and willing to try anything.

I like the more obviously personal Used Cars a lot, as well as the yin and yang of State Trooper and Open All Night, with the latter offering one of the album's few glimmers of light. The article highlights the echoey, early rockabilly sound, and they're right – it's far closer to that in spirit than to folk music, for all that it's acoustic.

I go back and listen to it every now and then, and there's no doubt that it's one of Springsteen's most important albums.

Forward Prizes 2018 shortlist

The shortlist for this year's Forward Prizes has been announced. They look reasonably varied to me, with some new names cropping up there, although as always they're pretty much dominated by the major presses.

I'll have to try to catch up with some poetry reading, to include some of these, over the next few months. Vahni Capildeo, who won the Best Collection Prize in 2016 , is nominated again – I enjoyed her last book, and I'll look forward to reading this one.

Why Do Birds Suddenly Disappear?

We recently ran an excellent feature by Lev Parikian in Bird Watching, about the theme of this book. I can recommend it very highly, whether you're already a birder, a lapsed birdwatcher, someone dabbling around the edges but determined to learn more, or an absolute beginner. Above all, it's about what it means to be a birdwatcher, and why building a connection to nature matters. Try it.

Strange spring

It's been a funny old spring, bird-wise. The cold temperatures right into the first week of May, and the northerly winds that brought them, held up the arrival of many migrants, and even now, I've yet to hear a Cuckoo, have barely heard or seen any Willow Warblers, and missed Wheatear altogether (although that was more that I haven't been to any suitable habitat, really). Hirundines and Swifts have been sparse, although numbers are starting to grow now.

On the other hand, some species, such as Yellow Wagtail, appeared in large groups when they did arrive, and there have been decent passages of things like Black Tern (plus a couple of White-winged Black Terns). Up at Frampton Marsh RSPB last week, there were some good waders – lots of Dunlin and Avocets, a few Curlew Sandpipers and Little Stints, and Greenshanks.

Some of these things may be connected to longer term declines or increases, but others are part of what makes migration, and birdwatching, so endlessly fascinating. Things turn up where they shouldn't, or when they shouldn't, or both, and so you never know quite what you'll find when you leave the house.

It's something I touched on in my book A Sky Full Of Birds – you can buy it here, or if you'd prefer a signed copy I have paperbacks available. Just email me if you're interested.

Battle Royal and Blood Royal

Over the last few weeks I've read Hugh Bicheno's two-part history of the Wars of the Roses, Battle Royal and Blood Royal. They're extremely readable, with plenty of in-depth material that I hadn't come across before, and he's particularly good at looking at what the motivations of the participants might have been, the more obscure members of the gentry as well as the big names.

But at times, he's prone to making big claims without producing much evidence to back them up, most notably regarding the legitimacy of Edward IV. Now you can make a good case for him not having been the son of Richard of York, but some of the reasons Bicheno gives don't really hold up. Yes, Edward was a lot taller than either of his supposed parents, but his brother George and one of his sisters were also notably tall, so I'm not sure what that proves. Given that much of his argument, especially in the second book, depends on you accepting his claim, this unwillingness to go into detail is annoying at best.

What also gives me cause for concern about these claims is that Bicheno is rather slapdash in his approach to minor details. He repeats the old myth about the Battle of Losecote Field being so called because the rebels threw away their livery as they fled. In fact, it was never called that until the 19th century, and the name more likely comes from 'hlose-cote field', a locally common name referring to a cottage with pig sties.

Similarly, in his description of the Battle Of Edgecote, he talks about the slaughter of the Welsh Yorkist troops as they fled, and says that Welsh Road runs through the battlefield, implying that it is so called because it's where the slaughter took place. But Welsh Road actually gets its name because it's an old drovers' route through the Midlands, used by Welsh drovers to avoid the main turnpikes. That's all pretty well attested, and long stretches of it even now show all the signs of having been so.

Nit-picking, maybe, but it makes me wonder about the lack of evidence for his bigger claims.

New-look England

Well, maybe Ed Smith is going to prove me wrong straight away, which can only be a good thing. I agree with most of what Jonathan Agnew says here. Buttler is, as Smith has said, a unique talent, and I'd always want to find a way to keep him in the test set-up. He's the sort of player that could win you a game in a session, and for all the nay-saying about him being a 20/20 player, there are others who have made the switch successfully. David Warner, for example.

Bess looks a good choice, too. He probably won't get a lot to do in these first couple of tests, but it's a bold selection.

Three reasons to be depressed by cricket...

...other than cheating Australians and the misery of England's winter tours, I mean.

1 TalkSport getting the rights to broadcast England's tours next winter. I don't care who they recruit, it's not going to be Test Match Special, is it? And although TMS these days isn't always as good as it could be, it's still pretty great.

2 The creation of another new format for the ECB's city-franchise league. Why? They say it's partly to differentiate it from their 20/20 Blast competition, in which case why not just do one or the other? Preferably the former, as many cricket fans, me included, will have zero interest in supporting artificially created teams that ignore large parts of the country. Reading around the decision, it seems the ECB don't really give a damn what cricket fans think, though. They want to attract new audiences. Which is fine, but pretty pointless if you drive away your core audience in doing so. Also, why the obsession with speed? They've shaved time off the game anyway, but will then penalise teams for slow over rates, with the result, of course, that potentially close finishes (which is what people want to see in limited over and 20/20 cricket) will be ruined by late adjustments to the target. If I'm giving up an evening to watch a game of cricket, half an hour here or there makes no difference, but I do want to see the game decided by skill.

3 The appointment of Ed Smith as national selector. How predictable that it should be an Oxbridge educated former Middlesex player. There's a lot of talk that he'll take a stats-based, 'Moneyball' approach, which is fine up to a point, but I suspect will mean a return to the chopping and changing of the 80s and 90s. It's no coincidence that England's best years, during my lifetime, were with David Graveney and Geoff Miller as selectors – both of them emphasised continuity, consistency, and settled teams.

Redstart Day

I've probably written on here before about the fact that April 20th is, in my mind, Redstart Day. For years, on my old patch, I would see Redstarts migrating through the area, usually in a hedge at Thornton Reservoir, but occasionally at somewhere like Groby Pool.

The date already had great significance, because it was the birthday of my older sister Rebecca, who died of cancer in 2004, aged 35. And somewhere along the line, the two things became linked in my mind, and going out and seeing a Redstart became a little ritual of remembrance.

Of course, there's a self-fulfilling prophecy element to it. Migrating Redstarts favour particular habitat, so you have to go out looking for them specifically, and most years, I've probably not visited likely sites until the 20th has rolled around and jogged my memory. Still, it's a habit I can't kick.

So, when my colleague Mike Weedon found one at Ferry Meadows Country Park, just along the road from the office, this morning, I had to go to take a look. And there it was, a gloriously sharply-marked male, flitting up and down a hedgerow, and occasionally dropping down to the ground to eat a tasty morsel. A couple of Whitethroats were frequenting the same hedge, and a bit further along, a Lesser Whitethroat showed up, too. Evidence that, after the long winter and cold spring, migration is in full flow.

I wrote about this, and the miracle of migration more generally, in my book A Sky Full Of Birds, which is available online, at most bookshops, or direct from me (if you want a signed copy).

But I also talked about them for BBC Radio 4's Tweet of the Day, recently – you can listen to it here.

Aunt Margaret's Pudding by Alison Brackenbury

This arrived yesterday – Alison Brackenbury's new collection for HappenStance Press. Looking forward to getting stuck into it like I would any good dessert!

Shibboleths

Here's a straightforward question. What do you understand by the word 'shibboleth'?

I ask because, in the reporting of the Barry Gardiner story, two different versions have been given as the standard, contemporary definition, and one of them surprises me. Not that it makes a huge amount of difference to the story, I'm just interested.

Scotland in Spring (4)

Finally, another pic from Hopeman harbour, on the Moray Firth. These Turnstones and Purple Sandpipers returned to these rocks to feed the second the tide turned, having roosted on the harbour walls while it was at its highest point. Purple Sands are always a pleasure to see, because as probably the most maritime of all our waders, they very rarely turn up anywhere even slightly inland.

There's a lot more about waders, birding in Scotland, and all of Britain's best birdwatching spectacles, in A Sky Full Of Birds. It's now a couple of years since it came out, but you can buy it using that link.

If you'd prefer a signed copy, drop me a line through the email link on the right, or through the comments, and I can sort one out. Paperbacks only, at the moment, sorry.

Scotland in Spring (3)

More waders – this time the Ringed Plover and a Redshank together, and Turnstones on the harbour wall. The latter were all at various stages of moulting into their summer plumages.

Scotland in Spring (2)

A couple more shots from last week – a Redshank on the harbour wall at Hopeman, and a Ringed Plover testing out its camouflage there.

Scotland in spring (1)

I was up on Speyside for a couple of days last week, with a Bird Watching Magazine/Heatherlea Birding readers' holiday. We saw around 90 species of bird in just two days, including White-tailed Eagle, Goshawk, Velvet Scoter, Black Grouse, Iceland Gull and Purple Sandpiper. But I'm not a good enough photographer to have snapped most of them, so here's a lovely male Bullfinch on the feeders, and a Red Squirrel doing its best to hide.

Ball tampering

If you have no interest in cricket at all, or if you're an Australian, you may want to look away now. It's taken me a few days to digest exactly what went on in the Newlands Test, but I've finally pieced together a few thoughts.

1 The statements made by Steve Smith and Cameron Bancroft at the press conference were insulting to the intelligence of any cricket fan. They talked about it as if it were something that had happened to them, as if they had no control over it whatsoever. Do they really expect us to believe that, had they not got caught, they'd have been wracked by guilt?

2 Still, at least they made it to the press conference. Where was Warner, who was certainly part of the 'leadership group'? And Lehmann?

3 If Lehmann knew nothing about it, as they claimed, then what exactly is he doing as coach? If he did (and his utterly shifty reaction once he realised Bancroft had been caught on camera suggests that's the case), he needs to be sacked.

4 So do Smith and Warner, and both they and Bancroft need lengthy bans. I've some sympathy for the latter, because I suspect he was pressured into doing the dirty work because he's the youngest member of the side, and the one whose place is in most jeopardy. But if he isn't willing to break ranks and say so, then I'm afraid he has to cop the same punishment as the others.

5 A lot is made of the centrality of 'mateship' to Australian sport, and culture in general. And yet the worst thing about this is how willing Smith and Warner have been to throw Bancroft under the train. By talking about the leadership group, too, they've potentially implicated Starc and Hazlewood, and by all accounts neither are happy about it, saying they didn't take part in the lunchtime discussions. When Mike Atherton was caught mucking about with the ball in 1994 (and he should have been sacked as England captain at the time), he did at least have the guts to do it himself.

6 The ICC could have acted sooner. Warner has been wearing tape on his fingers while fielding for the last two years. He should have been told to remove it, or that he also had to wear it for batting. Its presence looks very suspicious.

7 Whenever something like this happens, the Aussies like to imply that there are only two ways to play. You can be hard, aggressive, push the limits and win, or you can do it the soft, 'English' way, and lose. But they're wrong. In recent years, New Zealand under Brendon McCullum showed that you could play aggressive, attractive, winning cricket without disrespecting your opponents, the game, or the cricket-watching public. The Aussies need a new coach in that vein – Jason Gillespie might be the man.

8 Finally, how on earth did they think they'd get away with it? With 30 cameras watching? Was it really worth the risk? At the stage that it happened, they were practically out of the game anyway.

Almost there

I'm just £25 short of my £250 target for Walk All Over Cancer, in aid of Cancer Research, with a few days of March left. If you feel like helping this very important cause, then please give whatever you can afford. Thank you.

Tweet of the Day: Redstart

Here's the last of the Tweets of the Day I did for BBC Radio 4 – it's the Redstart, which is an absolutely wonderful little bird in its own right, but which has also taken on some personal significance for me. I didn't see or hear one at all last year, either on passage or on the breeding grounds, so I'll have to put that right this spring.

Our Old Lady Of The Rain, by Jane Commane

I've only just noticed that The Guardian's Poem of the Week is Our Old Lady Of The Rain, by Jane Commane, from her debut collection Assembly Lines.

Jane, of course, runs Nine Arches Press and has worked absolutely tirelessly for its poets (including me) and many others over the years. It's a really fine debut, and I'll write about it at greater length in the near future, but you can get a taste of it in that Guardian feature.

As always at Poem of the Week, some of the comments are rather baffling, but at least it's people talking about poetry.

Free money!

Well, not quite, but if you're a UK author, you really need to sign up at the ALCS site – once you're registered, and have added all the works that you've written or part-written, then you'll be eligible to receive payments for library borrowings, photocopying for schools, etc. Lifetime membership costs just £36, which is taken from your first payment (so no upfront cost), but you might be eligible for free membership anyway if you're a member of certain unions or other organisations.

A plea

This month, I'm taking part in Cancer Research UK's Walk All Over Cancer campaign, and trying to raise £250 for the charity by doing at least 10,000 steps a day. That isn't hard at the weekend, or on days when I'm working in the field, but on an office-bound day, it can take a bit of doing at times.

My dad recently underwent major surgery to remove cancer from his bowel – I'm pleased to say it seems to have been entirely successful and he's recovering well at home now. Throughout his long stays at Leicester General Hospital and Coalville Community Hospital, he received wonderful care from the NHS doctors, nurses and other staff, but I'm very aware that the advances that have been made in fighting cancer are at least in part due to the work of charities such as Cancer Research UK.

When my sister, Rebecca, died of cancer in 2004, survival rates for all types of the disease were lower than they are now, so if we want things to keep improving, both the NHS and these charities need help.

Anyway, I'm now only £35 short of my target, with 10 days left, so if there's any way you can donate even a couple of quid to help me reach it, it would be massively appreciated. By me, certainly, not that that matters, but more so by the many people who are currently facing the disease.

Thank you.

Tweet of the Day: Wheatear

I didn't expect my second Tweet of the Day to appear quite so quickly, but the last few days have seen a trickle of Wheatears starting to appear in the UK, so it's good timing.

My only slight disappointment is that they describe it on the website as the 'English Ortolan', which is perfectly correct, but isn't the fact that everybody likes to quote concerning the name of the Wheatear.

That, of course, is that 'wheatear' is a corruption of the original Anglo-Saxon 'hvit oers', or 'white arse'. As I may have mentioned in A Sky Full Of Birds, the Anglo-Saxon's weren't much given to thinking too long or hard about the names of birds, what with so much of their time being taken up with fighting, feasting, feuding, engaging in long and convoluted religious arguments, and writing epic poetry to annoy undergraduates in the centuries to come.

Instead, they just fixed on one very obvious feature of the bird in question, and named it after that. In this case, a white rump. If you're not lucky enough to live in an upland area where they breed, now's the time to look for them as they go through on passage. They favour areas of sheep or rabbit-cropped grass, and have a habit of perching on molehills or cowpats to survey the surrounding area for tasty morsels.

Tweet of the Day: Curlew

Apparently my Tweet of the Day about the Curlew was on Radio 4 yesterday morning at 6.40am. I recorded it and two more (on the Redstart and the Wheatear) last spring, but I wasn't sure exactly when they were going to use them. I think (or hope) that the Redstart one will be on April 20th, for reasons that will become clear when you hear it.

But anyway, if you missed yesterday's episode, and if you have a hankering to hear my dulcet Midland tones rambling about the glorious song of what's pretty much my favourite bird species, you can hear it here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09vzn2j

Our Place, by Mark Cocker

I've written on here before about my admiration for the writing of Mark Cocker. Crow Country and Claxton: Field Notes From A Small Planet are both superb books, full of pin-sharp observation of the natural world, conveyed through precise but luminous prose.

Birds and People, his book with photographer David Tipling, and Bird Britannica, its predecessor, are perhaps even bigger favourites of mine, the sort of volumes that I return to again and again, for education and inspiration.

But this latest book might be his most important yet, asking the question of whether we can save Britain's wildlife before it's too late, and suggesting some radical solutions. It arrived at the end of last week, and I'm looking forward to reading it over the next few days.

I should also declare an interest here. I once did a reading with Mark (and Katrina Porteous) in Norwich, and I was also lucky enough to go on a birdwatching trip to Papua New Guinea with him. Lines from one of my poems ('At Gedney Hill', from Troy Town), are used as the epigraph to one of the chapters here.

But that's by the by. If you have any interest in the wildlife of these islands, and its conservation, then this is a must.

A Sky Full Of Birds reviewed at Booktopia

Thank you to Australian author Kate Forsyth for this very kind review of A Sky Full Of Birds – the whole Booktopia site is worth a good browse, full as it is of reviews.

A Sky Full Of Birds is available by following this link, or if you'd like a signed copy, drop me a line using the email link on the left.

Diversifly

This rather splendid book is out a week tomorrow, February 8th (the web page hasn't been updated yet), and as you'll see, it comes with a whole-hearted recommendation from me. As well as commissioned poems from the likes of Carrie Etter, James Sheard and Andrew McMillan, there's a lot of really fine work by other familiar and not-so-familiar names. The artwork is excellent, too, and there's a foreword by Brett Westwood. Enjoy!

Adrian Slatcher on The Fall

I don't know enough of The Fall's work to write anything remotely coherent about them – I've dipped in and out over the years and found stuff I've loved and stuff I've hated. But Adrian Slatcher has written an excellent blog about them here. I enjoyed reading it then started to explore some of the tracks and albums mentioned.

Under The Radar 20

The winter issue of Under The Radar is available from the Nine Arches Press online shop here – you can also buy four-issue subscriptions.

You can see the list of featured poets here, and of course there's also short fiction and reviews of poetry collections. I won't start picking out names here, but suffice to say that I'm delighted we managed to get such a strong selection of poets and poems for this issue.

Forward Prize judges announced

Interesting judging panel for this year's Forward Prizes for Poetry – Bidisha, Mimi Khalvati, Chris McCabe, Niall Campbell and Jen Campbell. There's a link there for entries, but essentially editors have until March 9 (through Submittable), or March 23 (for physical copies).

Ocean Vuong wins TS Eliot Prize

This year's TS Eliot Prize winner is Ocean Vuong, for his debut collection Night Sky With Exit Wounds. I haven't read it yet, but I'll look forward to it. As always, there's been some debate on Facebook and other online forums about whether or not judges Bill Herbert, James Lasdun and Helen Mort chosen the right winner, but that's pretty much par for the course with such awards and competitions – the fact that they at least get people talking about contemporary poetry is partly the point of them, surely?

The UK's favourite nature book

I came across this earlier today – Land Lines are looking to find the UK's favourite nature book. They're all excellent, as you'd expect, but there's three in there that I'd find very very hard to separate – The Peregrine, John Clare's Selected Poems, and of course The Natural History of Selborne. But I'd have to go for JA Baker's masterpiece, in the end.

Steve Spence on Peter Dent

Another excellent review at Litter, with Steve Spence discussing Peter Dent's new collection about the Rendlesham Forest Incident. I've liked what I've read of Dent's work in the past, and I've also got a bit of a soft spot for UFO-related mysteries.

Martin Stannard on Trevor Joyce

I really enjoyed reading this review of Trevor Joyce's Selected Poems by Martin Stannard, over at the always readable Litter. It says all sorts of interesting things about mainstream poetry, non-mainstream poetry, and what Stannard wants to find in poetry. As always, plenty to agree and disagree with, but isn't that what a review should do?

Out on the Washes

I had some binocular and scope testing to do yesterday, so I took myself off into the Fens to do it. Perfect, really – wide horizons, plenty of fencelines and ditches to help judge distance, and a misty murk in which you get to see the difference that top-end Austrian and German optical technology can make.

I had some hopes of seeing the Rough-legged Buzzard that has been around Parson Drove, or the Bramblings that have hung around nearby, but I missed out on both, so to finish the testing I headed over to Eldernell at dusk.

I'm glad I did. The flooded Nene Washes were a mass of wildfowl, with the air full of the whistling of Wigeon and the hollering of Whooper Swans. A Marsh Harrier glided past, and just as I was packing up to leave, a Short-eared Owl quartered the nearest meadow then perched on a gatepost, its yellow eyes standing out from the many shades of brown and grey around it.

It's hard to believe, standing atop the grass bank there, looking out over this enormous wetland teeming with birdlife, that you're only a few miles outside a major city. It's a strange landscape, being very much shaped by man, despite the fact that here, at least, the river is allowed to overflow annually. But it has something that many British wildlife sites (and sights) don't – scale. You can stand there and be convinced that there's nothing in the world other than you and thousands upon thousands of birds.

The Snettisham 'spectacular' is one natural event that does rival this for size, and now's just about the best time to see it at the RSPB reserve in Norfolk. If you want to know more about it, you could always read about it in my book, A Sky Full Of Birds.

Blackbox Manifold 19

The 19th issue of Blackbox Manifold is out now, and features poetry from Tim Allen, John Balaban, Felix Bazalgette, Daragh Breen, Ian Cartland, Jonathan Catherall, Claire Crowther, Charlotte Eichler, Adam Flint, Angela Gardner, Daniel Y Harris, Sarah Hayden, Allen C Jones, Eric Langley, Ann Lauterbach, Drew Milne, Duncan Montgomery, Michael O'Neill, Nisha Ramayya, Mark Russell, Ian Seed, Helen Tookey, and Howard Wright, plus a review by Adam Piette of collections by Rachel Blau DePlessis, Drew Milne and Iain Britton.

Starting as I mean to go on

I thought I'd make a few New Year resolutions for a change, one of which is to finally try to write a novel that's been rattling round my head for years. I'm setting myself to write 3000 words a week until it's done, which sounds manageable until you actually sit down and attempt to write it.

Another is to knock something resembling another poetry collection into shape – I've got most of it reasonably finished, but there are maybe half a dozen key poems that need serious work.

But, and you'll have to excuse me for bringing my day job into things here, I'm also trying to complete the My200BirdYear challenge, as featured in Bird Watching, and the Walk 1000 Miles challenge, as featured in our sister magazine, Country Walking.

I've made a slow start to both, with a lunchtime walk today logging a couple of miles, and 24 species, mainly from my own garden and from the daily commute. Things will really start in earnest at the weekend.

I downloaded the OS app to log all my walks on, and also came across this, rather appropriately given that it's JRR Tolkien's birthday today. It's a much bigger challenge, especially if you have to walk across the Dead Marshes with the Eye of Sauron on you, but still, it's worth a try.