Showing posts with label JA Baker. Show all posts
Showing posts with label JA Baker. Show all posts
Friday, 12 January 2018
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.
Wednesday, 9 May 2012
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.
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.
Wednesday, 9 September 2009
Two Poems
I've got two new poems, Uchronie and Variations On A Theme By J A Baker, over at the glorious treasure trove of poetry and criticism that is Gists & Piths.
J A Baker, for those who aren't familiar with the name, was a librarian who wrote a book, The Peregrine, that still stands in a class of its own where nature writing is concerned. Published in 1967, it's pretty much an extended prose poem on the Essex coastal landscape, the British winter (remember that?), obsession, and of course the birds of the title. Robert Macfarlane's piece on it here pretty much says it all, really, and I can't recommend it highly enough.
The book is still available, either by ordering that NYRB version on Amazon, or by scouring secondhand bookshops for the original or the various later editions that followed in the late 60s and 70s. Baker did write a follow-up, The Hill Of Summer, and while it's not at all bad, it doesn't really live up to the expectations created by his masterpiece.
J A Baker, for those who aren't familiar with the name, was a librarian who wrote a book, The Peregrine, that still stands in a class of its own where nature writing is concerned. Published in 1967, it's pretty much an extended prose poem on the Essex coastal landscape, the British winter (remember that?), obsession, and of course the birds of the title. Robert Macfarlane's piece on it here pretty much says it all, really, and I can't recommend it highly enough.
The book is still available, either by ordering that NYRB version on Amazon, or by scouring secondhand bookshops for the original or the various later editions that followed in the late 60s and 70s. Baker did write a follow-up, The Hill Of Summer, and while it's not at all bad, it doesn't really live up to the expectations created by his masterpiece.
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