Tag: Daniel Greenwood poetry

Fool’s Wood – my third poetry collection

Daniel GreenwoodLeave a comment

I’m publishing my third collection of poems for you to hear:

  1. Fools wood (0:03)
  2. Green man on a train (0:46)
  3. Night hawks (2:00)
  4. The beast (3:02)
  5. The memory of things (3:53)
  6. Children of the earth (4:57)
  7. Shoot the wind (5:54)
  8. Empty oak (6:48)
  9. Cross the Dart (7:50)
  10. Where the sea once swept (9:01)
  11. Usnea (10:33)
  12. Cosdon Hill (11:38)
  13. Elemental heath (13:20)
  14. Sakers in the mist (14:57)
  15. At midnight (15:55)
  16. The wrong man of Wilmington (16:44)
  17. To know the world (17:25)
  18. The viaduct (18:02)

Glossary (23:57)
Cairn – stones piled as landmark
Cist [kist] – ancient burial chamber defined with stones
Sphagnum –moss found in bogsSpringtails – jumpy invertebrate of soil and decaying wood
Stone rows – stones believed to be aligned by people long ago
Tor – granite outcrops protruding from hills on Dartmoor
Usnea – scientific name for beardy species of lichen typically found in British ‘rainforests’

These poems were written before the Covid-19 pandemic but I haven’t managed to get the collection out there until now.

Fool’s Wood is my third collection after I am living with the animals (2014), and Sumptuous beasts (2018).

I am working on getting a booklet printed but that will take a little bit longer.

The poems are inspired by the stories of, and time spent in, Sussex, Dartmoor, Mayo and the Yorkshire Dales.

I don’t approach these things with a theme, other than the fact they are the usually products of walking in wilder, open, windy places.

‘The Viaduct’ was written in September 2019 during an intense storm in the Yorkshire Dales (thank you Kate). It was a difficult time and the fact it was only months before the beginning of the pandemic makes it feel all the more significant, like one world ending.

My sister read ‘At midnight’ at my wedding ceremony in April 2024.

I’m grateful to Karel and Eddie who were my companions on the ‘desperate birding’ required to see the spectre of a saker falcon in Czechia back in 2017.

I dedicate this collection to my wife, my mother and late father, and my sister, for all we have been through together in the last 6 years. I also dedicate it to the memory of my uncle Joe who passed away in November 2019, as one world ended and another began.

Hopefully the next collection won’t take as long to arise.

The cover image is one of the green man roof bosses at St. Pancras Church, Widecombe in the Moor, Dartmoor. Photo by DG from May 2023.

Thanks for reading (and listening).

Poetry: nature writing book titles they won’t publish

Daniel Greenwood3 Comments


My life inside a snail shell
The Funguy: How suggesting I’m into psychedelics made me interesting to other people
Living in a badger sett for 15 minutes and other memories
Dog poo diaries: a guide to chucking bags at trees
Memoirs of a sexist birder: volume 9 and still they won’t edit me
Seagull: a day in the life of Britain’s most hated white thing
See no weevil: My failed journey through Britain’s beetle populations
Guided by porpoises: I read all the field guides so you don’t have to
Howling like a Woolf: Bloomsbury only publish you if you’re privately educated or on TV
Grassways: wild lines
So sewer me: a rat’s tail
Chasing ground nesting birds: a dog’s tale
Urban city wild jungle street town nature adventure chronicles
Human nature: my vague explanation across 220 pages for why I am natural
Human naturer: the sequel to the one above, this time with references to that one
The Tree: they asked me to write something about trees
Roamania: the year I walked on every inch of England
Man chop wet wood, make fire eventually: my attempts to inject some much-needed masculinity into the nature scene
Hedge fund manager: a guide to raising money for conservation projects
Windy Cindy: the day I got blown away by a tweet someone wrote about the weather
T O X I C: I ate all the poisonous plants so you… don’t… hav–

© Daniel James Greenwood, 2023


Poetry: winter/spring haiku

Daniel Greenwood5 Comments

For those who aren’t aware, I am a self-published poet of very little renown, thank god. You can see more about that here.

I have a third booklet of poems which are not far off being ready but I’ve written very little in the past year. My pandemic mind has not helped me to write anything, or to read any poetry either.

That changed when I started reading the Penguin book of Haiku a few months ago. It definitely inspired me. I found the 5/7/5 syllable structure to be simple enough for my stay at home mind. That said, I don’t keep to strict rhyming systems anyway as I find that too restrictive most of the time.

I first learned about haiku when studying creative writing at university. It was great to get back into it again. Here is a selection:

Coronavirus,
once an ogre in the woods,
now walks among us

who predicted this?
a whole year of hidden life,
of feeding the cat

why has this happened
when we thought we knew it all
but we knew nothing

January days
never much light to be had
but the darkness fades

coffee-coloured mud
still holds panes of brittle ice
that break underfoot

the pond is frozen
wind moves the willow branches
listen: the ice cracks

bullfinch pink, perching,
it travels through the pine trees
the female follows

streaming over stone
the gill flows through the woodland
taking everything

primroses ready
to open flowers again
to mark the season

hairy-footed bees
cruising around the flowers
searching for a mate

peregrine falcon
passing over where I live
(thankful I’m human)

the headless pigeon:
nobody knows who killed it
or who took its head

a storm came at lunch
sudden whipping back of trees
raindrops splattered glass

face masks in gutters
did people mean to drop them?
one had shit on it

gulls cry from the roof
sparrowhawk sails overhead
followed by a crow

at dusk the wagtails
together on the rooftops
one by one they fly

when will it all end?
will there be a ringing bell
or will it change us

what if we are trapped
if this is our punishment
for taking too much

when will we hug our
mothers, fathers, our children,
when will it be safe?

oak trees black at dusk
clouds build on the horizon
the river flows on

a trespassing drone
seen off by a grey heron
both in silhouette

waiting on the news
you expect the worst of it
but the sun rises

© Daniel James Greenwood 2021

Poetry: Semerwater

Daniel Greenwood7 Comments

I’m in the process of editing a third booklet of poems. It takes me something like 2-4 years to get one finished because things need to be left to cool and develop, you need time away from it. I have a ghost document of poems that don’t quite fit in.

This is one of those poems. It’s about Semerwater, a lake in the Yorkshire Dales in north-east England that I visited in May 2018.

If you want to see more of my poems or buy yourself a booklet please head over here.

 Semerwater 
  
 She sleeps on the shoreline
 ashes pulsing
 to life in the hills
 for the last time
  
 ruined barns
 bake again
 in the afternoon sun
  
 flies land
 on my thumbs
  
 all by the lake
 built by mistake
 the dumping of
 rocks and silt
  
 by forces without name
  
 forces without a prior reputation
 for landscape-scale devastation
  
 a time before
 we were there
 to croon and
 ascribe blame
 at the sidelines
  
 or did we
  
 Semerwater
  
 at its edges 
 a hare 
 striding see-saw 
 of a thing.

© Daniel James Greenwood 2020

  

Poetry: Heavy metal orchids

Daniel Greenwood3 Comments

I’m in the process of editing a third booklet of poems. It takes me something like 2-4 years to get one finished because things need to be left to cool and develop, you need time away from it. I have a ghost document of poems that don’t quite fit in. This is one about a walk on the South Downs between Firle and Itford in June 2019.

I really thought this one would work with the collection, but something changed and it’s going free.

As I progress towards finishing the third booklet, I’ll post some more of those which won’t be in it. Definitely interested in your views on them.

Mount Caburn is an Iron Age hillfort (which is no longer there).

If you want to see more of my poems or buy yourself a booklet please head over here. 

Heavy metal orchids

 Barren Downs
 broken by sea
 tropical blue
 and the sinking hint
 of chalk reef
  
 Newhaven onion dome 
 and brown lagoon
 toy town train services
 honking on approach

 up here you all look like
 ants who have
 gained human traits
  
 a thirst for farming
 more than aphids
  
 up here skylarks translating 
 the silence of masts
 stood in muted alarm 

 heavy metal orchids
 so rare they’re padlocked
 in barbed wire cages
  
 at Lewes the ramparts
 of Mount Caburn 
 like a bowl cut 
 but you promised
 the reality was far 
 more blood-soaked
  
 Ouse water a
 concrete slow worm
 with seaweed on the side
 and rusting iron cranks
 crawling with a sea
 of red spider-mites
  
 hare barely 
 breaking barley
 her winging blues
 and tortoiseshells
  
 the wooden bridge
 where the crow
 begs a toll like a child 

© Daniel James Greenwood 2020

Poetry: The falcon etched

Daniel GreenwoodLeave a comment

Malham Cove-1

The falcon etched

Wait with the falcon etched
into cove rock at Malham,
meadowsweet aglow
in the fields below.

Wait for the falcon etched,
with those cheeks streaked,
drawn like the scars
on the limestone it enlivens.

Does it ever move,
bird or fossil.

This dale holds great riches
for those talons and talents
to savour.

© Daniel James Greenwood 2017