Unmute - Young Voices from Lockdown edited by Kate Clanchy

Kate Clanchy is a well known British poet, who works with young people. The poetry in this book comes from students in a class that met at a school in Oxford but during lockdown continued their poetry workshops online. Kate shared a lot of these poems on Twitter (if you're interested in poetry and you follow no-one else on Twitter, follow @KateClanchy1, the poems she shares from her students are amazing).

I had really enjoyed reading Kate's Twitter stream and once I heard about this book I was determined to buy it!

This is a book full of poems that are well written and truly felt. The poets come from a wide range of backgrounds and countries and bring their varied experiences into their work. These poems speak of inequalities, loneliness, family, culture and many other topics.

Lockdown is often the dominant theme of the poems, as in The Poem in Quarantine by Linnet Drury:

.....If this poem were autumn, it

would not be dry enough for leaf fights, if it were

spring the daffodils would be stars a little worse

for wear.

The boredom of lockdown specifically crops up, as does food, and both are combined in this line from Cooking by Mukahang Limbu:

Because time is a tuna sandwich

with some pickles and I am tired of it

Family is also a major theme, given that many of these poets have been spending a lot of time with their family during lockdown:

My mother

will always be

a language

I'll never understand.

from My Mother by Amaani Khan.

Lockdown is having a definite negative effect on people's mental welfare and that is evident in some of these poems, which address that issue

...It's been a long time

since I've done something

without asking if it will kill me.

from evening run by Annie Davison.

This is a brilliant anthology of poetry from young people, who are not just 'promising' but already talented poets who have interesting, vital things to say and who know how to write poetry.

All proceeds from this book go to Asylum Welcome, a charity assisting refugees and asylum seekers in Oxford.

Only a limited number of paperback anthologies were published (and I think have sold out) but you can buy Unmute on Kindle here.

Butterflies and Lovely Views, Arthurs Seat

Last Friday was a beautiful sunny day so we took the afternoon off and walked round Arthur's Seat, the first time we've been there since March. It's as beautiful as ever:

We were delighted to see butterflies, including one small copper

and several graylings

Graylings are declining in Scotland, but Arthur's Seat is one of their Edinburgh strongholds. You can read more about this special butterfly in this article on the Scottish Pollinators' blog, written by Anthony McCluskey of Butterfly Conservation. (Thanks to Crafty Green Boyfriend for the butterfly photos in this post).

We'll enter these butterfly records into the Big Butterfly Count which runs until 9 August.

Volunteering Recommences along Water of Leith

As lockdown eases in Scotland, volunteers are starting to return to the Water of Leith!

Yesterday I did my first river patrol in the Dells since early March! (We don't live close enough to the river for it to be within the allowable distance for #DailyExercise during lockdown.) It was lovely to be back along the river, to chat (at a safe distance) with people I haven't seen for months and to see so much wildlife. I had been concerned that I would find loads of litter along the paths, but there was relatively little, so I didn't have an onerous task picking it! One of the dog owners I chatted to, has been able to pick litter along the river throughout lockdown, and no doubt others have been doing the same. This is brilliant and shows how people have been caring for their local greenspaces.

The wildflower meadow near Bogs Bridge looks lovely

Several house martins were flying above this meadow, which is lovely to see and it was also just here that a roe deer trotted out of the undergrowth onto the path and then disappeared back into the undergrowth when it saw me! The sparrowhawks are fledging further downstream, though you can hear the noisy youngsters from quite a distance away. The other wildlife highlight of the walk was standing under an apple tree and being surrounded by blue tits and long tailed tits with a goldcrest joining them!

I'm looking forward to getting back into the habit of walking this part of the river every week!

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In other news, I found out via Twitter, that my poem Lost Dances of Cranes has been set to music by mezzo-soprano, Mariya Kaganskaya, composer Elinor Armer and pianist Alla Gladysheva. You can watch the video on Youtube here. While I'm flattered to have my poem set to music and it's a lovely video, it would have felt better to have been asked in advance. What do readers think on that one?

The Big Necessity by Rose George

Subtitled Adventures in the World of Human Waste this is a fascinating, entertaining (and sometimes disgusting) examination of the history and current situation for sanitation across the world.

We're taken on a tour of underground sewers in London, fields used for open defecation in India and various public conveniences across the world. The author examines differing cultural attitudes to human waste and to toilets themselves - why have only the Japanese really embraced the idea of the high-tech toilet and why do Western nations so prefer toilet paper rather than rinsing despite the former being considerably less hygienic? Along the way we meet campaigners, sewage engineers, toilet designers and politicians.

Sanitation is shown to be an essential - cholera, the best known water borned disease kills vast numbers of people in developing nations every year - yet one that is largely ignored at policy level. Four in ten people across the world still lack a toilet yet sanitation campaigns often fail due to trying to impose toilets on people who aren't used to them rather than working with communities.

Are we right though to consider human faeces as waste? The book also examines how human waste can be used to generate biogas for cooking and heating or treated so that it can be safely used as compost, as well as examining the dangerous practice of spraying untreated sewage on crops.

Throughout the book there are fascinating facts such as Jennifer Aniston using a body double in a scene where her character was cleaning a toilet!

This is an essential look at the world of sewage and the health and environmental issues associated with it. Just don't read it while eating.

The Big Necessity by Rose George, published (2008) by Portobello Books (now part of Granta Books).

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You may also be interested in this article on the Rapid Transition Alliance site about links between COVID_19, toilet paper shortages and sanitation.

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On an unrelated topic, I've delighted to have two poems published on the Plum Tree Tavern site, which you can read by following the links below:

Mayfly Time.

Leopard in Balance.

A Saturday in Saughton Park

Yesterday we had a lovely walk to and round Saughton Park, the first time we've actually been insde the park since lockdown began. The walled garden is looking beautiful

The roses are wonderfully in bloom just now

We also walked along the wonderful perimeter fence that is such a great place to find interesting insects! Yesterday's highlights included this red legged shieldbug

this cream spot ladybird (with a red mite)

this magnificent wasp

and this young hawthron shield bug, the young instars look quite different from the adult shield bugs

Moby Duck by Donovan Hohn

 

On 10 January 1992, a container ship sailing out from Hong Kong hit bad weather and lost many of its containers including one that was full of plastic bathroom toys (beavers, turtles, frogs and, most famously, ducks).

Written in 2011, this is the account of how Donovan Hohn tried to trace the story of those bathroom toys and follow their journeys across the world. Taking in the production of plastic toys, the science of ocean currents, climate change and plastic pollution, this is an adventure story as much as a journalistic investigation. It also (unsurprisingly perhaps) makes frequent reference to Moby Dick.

The plastic toys are really just a hook for this book, which is less about plastic pollution than I had hoped and more about the author's experience of travelling the oceans. It's interesting and well written but not as focussed as it could have been, though there's certainly a lot of interesting material here, investigations into the so called Garbage Patches in the Pacific Ocean, accounts of scientific investigations into ocean currents and the effects of plastic pollution on ocean ecology.

The scary thing is that many of those original plastic toys are probably still floating round the oceans, gradually being worn away by ocean currents and the eroded pieces of plastic being ingested by ocean animals. Even more scary is the fact that these plastic toy animals are only a fraction of the items lost at sea, adding their weight to the mass of pollution we add every day to the seas.

Moby Duck by Donovan Hohn, published (2012) by Union Books.

Crafting Face Masks

I really should have posted this a while ago, but it was only the other day, when I read that the Guardian newspaper website were looking for photos of people's homemade face masks that I even took a photo of my mask!

I've made several of these masks, some for myself, some for Crafty Green Boyfriend and one for my Dad (who has also got masks he bought locally).

I adapted a design I found online (sorry, I don't have the link). Basically:

Cut two 10 inch by 6 inch rectangles of cotton fabric and lay them on top of each other.

Fold over the long sides 1/4 inch and hem.

Fold over 1/2 inch along short sides and stitch down.

Thread a long shoe lace or other cord through the hem on each side so that it loops at the top and can be tied in a bow at the bottom

Gather the sides of the mask on the cord and adjust so it fits your face

Stitch the cord and fabric in place at the corners to keep from slipping

A pocket can be left between the two layers for inserting a replaceable filter (which could be a paper towe, a coffee filter or someting similar).

You can of course use elastic loops instead of the shoe lace / cord but the latter tends to be better if you wear glasses (I certainly found that my mask fell off all the time when it had elastic loops.)

To prevent your glasses from steaming up when wearing your mask, make sure it fits snugly on your nose and tuck it under your glasses. Apparently if this doesn't work, you can put a piece of double sided sticky tape between your nose and the mask. Don't touch the front of the mask while wearing it and make sure it fits properly. It should cover both your nose and your chin. Remove the mask by touching only the cord / elastic and wash regularly. Don't pull your mask down to talk to people!

Wearing a mask like this can reduce the chances of passing on the coronavirus and if everyone wears a mask or other face covering in indoor spaces or crowded outdoor spaces then everyone is protected.

It isn't necessary for your mask to colour co-ordinate with your living room wallpaper.

Remember social distancing and regular hand washing / sanitising are also required to minimise the risk of infection. Also avoid crowds and poorly ventilated indoor spaces.

Other mask designs are available, and many shops sell re-usable masks.