autumn sunset—
the cherry tree
on fire
originally published in Sense and Sensibility September 2025
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If you love seascapes of the west of Scotland, I can definitely recommend Frances MacDonald’s Sea Stories exhibition at the Scottish Gallery. Showing until the end of September.
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The first half of the collection moves through the seasons of the year, from Spring to the 'grey spaces of winter' in Hinterland. These are well observed poems, written with a great eye for detail, I particularly love the 'yellow cartoon feet' of the Little Egret in Season of Roses. All the poems are threaded with beautiful phrases to capture the individual feel of each season, including:
The syncopation of air-blue days (Sumer Is Icumen In)
sunwet smell of new roses (The Contemplation of Roses)
Soon the deer will come and shyly stamp out / the last blazing embers of summer. (Early Autumn)
Most poems in the second part focus on lonely people, including the remembered shared loneliness of the height of the COVID pandemic (Remembering Pestilence) and a lonely human sharing an encounter with a deer in The Quiet Night. Home briefly looks at the status of the Welsh language, weaving in images of the natural world:
'brittle on your tongue, slow as lichen, tactile as clay.
The language you dream in, yet cannot write.'
Dear London is an anti-love poem to the city the poet once lived in:
your wrinkled river, as tired as the moon (Dear London)
Most poems here are free verse, though Dinorwig is a haibun, offering an interesting potted history into the site of a Celtic hill fort and later a quarry.
The collection is brought to a close with Twilight.
'On the shore of night,
my pebbled heart is made of air,'
This is an enjoyable collection, offering insights into the natural world, memory, place and loneliness.
Contemplation of Roses by Annest Gwilym, published (2026) by Lapwing Publications. (Buy it here).
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Disclaimer: I was sent a free e-book of this title in exchange for an honest review.
You can read my reviews of earlier books by Annest, by following the links below:
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Meanwhile, I'm delighted to have a poem in the latest, Music themed, issue of Allegro magazine.
On Saturday we had a lovely walk around Blackford Pond and the Hermitage of Braid.
and Common Puffballs
The fungus below I think is Sheathed Woodtuft (but I may be wrong, so if you recognise it as something different, please let me know!)
It's definitely the time of year for fungi, so keep an eye out when you're out and about!
Shared with Nature Notes.
Weymouth writes about the historical human persecution of wolves and the current resurgence of the population (the wolf population has increased by 1,000 percent since 1965) bringing the animal back into landscapes where it has been absent for decades (though its range is barely more than half what it was in 1800). He talks to farmers and hunters, and visits the Wolf Science Centre in Vienna, listening to people's mixed feelings about wolves and looking at other environmental issues including climate change and forest fires.
Having not lived around wolves for so long, people are understandably nervous about the reappearance of predators that can eat their livestock, and without government support, it can be expensive to protect flocks against predation. People are reluctant to let nature take over:
"...this is what we speak of when we speak of rewilding. Certainly we should manage the risks as best we can, but rewilding means that the wild gets a hand back in the game, with an agency all of its own"
As one of the farmers interviewed in the book says: "If you make the choice to work in nature, you can't complain about nature. Nature gives us all this and we must give something in return".
This is a very readable, thought provoking book about our relationship with nature and 'the wilderness' centred on one species and the journey of one individual across a changing continent.
Lone Wolf by Adam Weymouth, published (2025) by Penguin.
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You may also be interested in my review of The Last Wolf by Jim Crumley.
It really does pay to look closely at things! I noticed these little blobs of a pretty orange colour today on some dead wood. I thought it was probably a slime mould and took a photo and it is indeed a slime mould. I think it's Red Raspberry Slime, but I'm willing to be corrected if there are any slime mould experts reading this.
Read more in this week's post on the Crafty Green Poet Substack.
Shared with Nature Notes.
Yesterday we had a lovely walk around Corstorphine Hill. One of the highlights was seeing this beautiful Small Copper butterfly, one of my favourites. These are really tiny butterflies with gorgeous colours and markings. They're not uncommon but they can be very elusive, partly because they're so small. This individual was very happy to be photographed, first posing on Ragwort, which is an important plant for many insects
We also saw a Speckled Wood
A Raven also flew over, but too quickly to be captured on camera!
Shared with Nature Notes.
