Tag: Fool’s Wood

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).