Jacob Polley wins the TS Eliot Prize

This year's TS Eliot Prize has been won by Cumbrian poet Jacob Polley, for his collection Jackself (Picador). He beat a strong shortlist, including Alice Oswald, Denise Riley, Vahni Capildeo, Ian Duhig and Bernard O'Donoghue.

It's not a book I've read yet. When Polley's first collection came out, to much fanfare, I was a member of the Poetry Book Society and was sent it as one of their quarterly choices, and I'd have to say I was pretty underwhelmed. Not that it was at all bad, just that it didn't seem nearly as exciting as some of the critical notices were promising it would be.

Because of that, I haven't got round to reading any of his subsequent collections. My loss, I suspect, if the poems I've seen from this latest book are anything to go by. Chair of judges Ruth Padel compared it to Geoffrey Hill's Mercian Hymns, and that particular masterpiece did spring to mind for me, too. Which can only be a good thing, I should add. I look forward to reading it.

You can read a couple of poems from the book here, and also hear him read them.

There's a really excellent account of the prize readings here, by poet Peter Daniels.

Camden Migration

Camden Migration, taking place from September 25th to October 5th, is an exploration into the migration of birds and people through the arts, celebrating cultural expansion but also considering its environmental impact, particularly on bird extinction.

On the 10th anniversary of the Morecambe Bay disaster, and the 100th anniversary of the loss of the last Passenger Pigeon, it will use art to explore the perils of migration to both humans and birds.

The Forge building, in which the Festival takes place, uses sustainable materials, powered in part by solar panels, with natural ventilation systems and featuring a 6.5m high living wall. 

The Ghost of Gone Birds Exhibition, a pop-up art studio, will breathe life back into the birds we've lost, creatively resurrecting extinct birds, so we don't lose any more. Eleven artists will be working at break-neck speed over the Festival to create a gallery of gone birds.

Conservationist and internationally-acclaimed poet Ruth Padel will give a talk about her book The Mara Crossing, a meditation on migration, of birds, animals and human beings, throughout history and in today's world of asylum-seekers and detention centres.

David Lindo, The Urban Birder, will give a talk about urban bird migration, and the effect which environmental changes, such as climate change, have on it.

The film drama 'Ghosts' directed by Nick Broomfield, about the Morecambe Bay disaster which saw 21 people lose their lives will be screened, following a short talk by Dr Diana Yeh to commemorate the lives lost during epic journeys of migration and to examine ways forward for the future.

All events can be found at The Forge website.

Resurgence & Ecologist

The November/December issue of Resurgence & Ecologist is out now, and features my review of Ruth Padel's The Mara Crossing, which you can also read here.

There's a lot else in the issue that you can't access online, with the likes of Jonathon Porritt, Heathcote Williams and Andrew Motion featured, plus Peter Abbs on Maitreyabandhu. If you've an interest in the natural world, or the arts, or the area where the two meet, it's a very rewarding read.

New Networks for Nature

I spent Friday and half of Saturday in Stamford, at the fourth annual New Networks for Nature symposium. The organisation has the long-term aim of establishing a festival celebrating the cultural significance of nature in Britain - on the evidence of this year, it's well on its way to doing just that.

It's really a bit unfair of me to pick out highlights, given that there were so many, and I'd be hard-pushed to find a poart of the programme that I didn't enjoy.

It all opened with Hanna Tuulikki singing entirely unaccompanied, but then she has such an extraordinary voice that no accompaniment could do it any justice. She somehow manages to make links between folk song and birdsong that really need to be heard to be believed - at the time I tweeted that she sounded like a cross between Bjork, Sandy Denny and a curlew, which I suppose at least ought to give some idea of what a unique voice she is. I have the feeling that I'm going to be looking for and downloading a lot of her work.

Conor Jameson's talk on Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, and the debt we owe to it, was really excellent. I've read his own Silent Spring Revisited (highly recommended), but there was plenty more to take away from this, not least the conviction that change can be achieved relatively quickly. The following talk, by Jim Perrin, was equally inspiring, arguing for the value of 'rapture' in our relationship with the natural world.

The panel debate, preceded by Ruth Padel reading three poems (one of her own, plus others from Clare and Larkin), considered the question "Do the British care about nature?" You wouldn't expect to come up with hard and fast answers, but there were some intriguing leads.

In the afternoon session, the hard science provided my early highlights, with Chris Hewson's look at the satellite-tracking of Cuckoos, and Nick Davies' analysis of exactly how Cuckoos trick host birds into raising their young in the first place. Bruce Pearson's talk on albatrosses was excellent too, with his artwork adding an extra dimension.

On Saturday morning, David Tipling's all too brief opening slot was superb. Most birders are familiar with David's photos (we certainly use them whenever possible at Bird Watching), but everyone in the theatre gave a little gasp at a couple of his recent photos of Hares. Katrina van Grouw is someone else I know through her work for the magazine, and her current book, The Unfeathered Bird, is terrific, but her talk about its making was something else again - the phrase "labour of love" doesn't really cover it.

I read three birdsong-related poems myself, before Charles Bennett read from his poem/song sequence The Angry Planet, as well as talking about its composition. He touched on a theme that kept re-emerging throughout the two days - how to avoid giving in to hopeless pessimism about the state of the natural world, without offering easy answers.

Finally, Hanna Tuulikki retuened, along with Nerea Bello and Lucy Duncombe, to sing Air falbh leis na h-eoin (Away With The Birds), a large-scale vocal composition inspired by the Western Isles. Suddenly my rather glib tweet of the previous day looked a bit closer to the truth - this was music that both imitated and completely transformed wader calls and songs.

There was, as I said, much more that's worthy of mention, and as always it was good to catch up with friends and colleagues (and frustrating to miss one or two others). But there was always a feeling of momentum really starting to build, and next year's event has the opportunity to develop that in a big way.

Voices for Nature

For the last couple of years, a month or so before Christmas, I've gone along to a gathering of writers, artists, poets, musicians, historians, scientists and film-makers, all of whom have one thing in common – they draw some or all of their inspiration from the natural world.

The first event was at Oxford University, and last year's at the BTO's Thetford headquarters - both were by invitation only.

This year's symposium, however, under the banner of Voices for Nature, is open to all, and takes place at Stamford Arts Centre on Friday 18th and Saturday 19th November. It's organised by New Networks for Nature, a recently-founded alliance whose goals are to challenge the low political priority placed upon wildlife and landscape in this country and to celebrate the central roles played by nature in our cultural life.

Voices for Nature will run over two days, and the first features talks from the likes of poet and novelist Ruth Padel, Pete Cairns (founder of the 2020 Vision photographic project), and the author Richard Hines, who trained the kestrels used in Kes, Ken Loach's classic film. There'll also be presentations by sound recordist Geoff Sample and Professor Tim Birkhead the author, academic and co-founder of New Networks for Nature.

On the second day, Voices for Nature will shift just down the road to Helpston Church, in the home village of John Clare, for another day's events in association with the John Clare Society. Speakers will include poet David Morley and the celebrated artist Carry Akroyd, much of whose recent work has been inspired by her exploration of 'Clare Country'.

I'll certainly be going to the Friday's events, and hope to be there on the Saturday too, but that will depend on the travel arrangements for a trip I'm going on the same day.

If you wish to attend one or both days the charge is £30 inclusive. Bookings will be handled by the Stamford Arts Centre, on tel: 01780 763 203, or by clicking here.

For further details or information, you can email info@newnetworksfornature.org.uk or mark.cocker@virgin.net

Buy one, get one free!

Christmas is coming, and, err, I’m getting fat. With that in mind, and before doing anything silly like eating less or exercising more. I’m trying to create more room in my cramped house my rationalising my bookshelves.

A while ago, I bought some books at the closing down of a bargain bookstore. They’d always sold a lot of remaindered poetry from the likes of Faber, Cape, Picador and Bloodaxe, and there were quite a few volumes worth having, but you basically had to buy a box at a time, for a fiver. So I did. Trouble is, there were also quite a few books in there that I already had, and a few more that I didn’t really want.

So, until Christmas, anyone buying a copy of Troy Town through this website (£9, including postage and packing) can also have one of the collections absolutely free - I'd like to think they were going to a good, poetry-reading home. I’ll send you the full list of what’s available when you enquire, but some of the poets include Don Paterson, Neil Rollinson, Jean Sprackland and Ruth Padel.

Email me at the link shown on the right, or just post a comment below. Oh, and don't worry if it takes me a while to get back to you - I'm going to be all over the place for the next couple of weeks.

Appallingly literal

I always rather liked Ruth Padel's poetry columns in The Independent. I didn't always agree with her interpretations, but at least that's what they were - interpretations, based on a close reading of the poem. At the very least, they sent you away with some ideas about the piece that hadn't occurred to you before, to adopt or reject at your leisure. They didn't waste too much time telling you about what the poem said, or what effect it might be intended to have on you - they just got straight on with telling how she thought the poet went about achieving that effect.

Unfortunately, this regular poetry column in The Times, by Frieda Hughes, misses the mark entirely. It seems to be a very literal retelling of the content, without ever going into the mechanics and magic of the poetry. I struggle to see what the reader gains from it that they couldn't get from just reading the poem carefully a couple of times. If you've seen it on a regular basis, you'll know that this is pretty much par for the course, and not a one-off. Shame, because there's little enough space given over to poetry in newspapers as it is. A missed opportunity.