Landscape and Loss

A couple of Saturdays ago I attended a conference that was held in the small church at Helpston, a village just outside Stamford in Lincolnshire. Many know the village because of its association with the poet John Clare. One of the conference sessions, which was titled ‘landscape and loss: inspirations from John Clare’, had particular resonance because Clare’s grave lay just beyond the thick walls and stained glass windows of Helpston Church. Clare had witnessed the ‘loss’ of great chunks of countryside to enclosure and many of his poems stem from the impact that the act of enclosure had on his relationship with the landscape with which he was so intimately associated.

Helpston stands in the Soke of Peterborough, bordered on three sides by river and on the fourth by the Great North Road. It is an area to which enclosure came late but for a sensitive poet, born of the labouring classes, it brought great sadness expressed in wonderful verse. Much of our greatest nature writing has been fuelled by the same sense of loss and it is a theme that weaves its way through the works of Richard Jefferies, Edward Thomas, Eric Ennion and Richard Mabey, for example. Reading these writers individually reveals the painful sense of personal loss that they felt in response to changes in landscapes dear to them. Reading them as a whole reveals a much deeper sense of loss, however, as each writer becomes a chronicler for part of a larger narrative; this narrative affects us all.

Our lives are short within the grand scheme of things. We are not endowed with the ability to gauge the true impact of changes that act over long periods of time; subtle changes are easily missed, their full meaning lost all too easily. That we find John Clare’s sense of loss relevant today underlines that the changes heaped upon our landscape are continuing. Should we read John Clare simply as one of our most gifted poets or should we shift our attention to the messages that his beautifully crafted verse delivers?

There is a danger that we, the audience, are reluctant to hear messages that speak of loss, messages full of negative news and lacking the all-important glimmer of hope. Clare’s landscape has changed, in most cases dramatically so. What remains is predominantly bleak arable, missing the species he would have recognised, but there are patches where work to ‘restore’ landscape is producing tangible and positive results. I think that we need the reassurance that these restored landscapes provide but we must not accept them too readily, lest they cheapen what has been lost; better to prevent loss than recreate a poor copy.

All in the eye

I have been reading Carry Ackroyd’s book about the Fens and the influence it has on her work as a printmaker. The subtitle of the book ‘Landscape Change John Clare and Me’ bears testament to the hold that this unique landscape has had on artists and writers down through the years. John Clare, often referred to as the peasant poet, documented the loss of ancient countryside to the changes he saw in farming practices. Working as a farm labourer, he was connected with the land in a way that other poets writing on natural history could never be; this shows through in his detailed observations and closeness to the subjects of his lines.

A key element of Carry’s work is the natural history that sits within her fenland landscapes. She is not just documenting the land but also the creatures that are an integral part of it. In this way, her work is refreshingly different from a traditional view of ‘wildlife art’, with its simple presentation of animals and birds divorced from their surroundings. In fact, Carry is part of a wider movement away from the tired images of lions, elephants and eagles that were once the mainstay of wildlife art. For me, art should stimulate an emotional response from the viewer and wildlife art should be no different. Whether it is the sense of space that comes from Carry’s fenland views or the tension of Andrew Haslen’s Brown Hares, crouched low within their Norfolk forms, good wildlife art connects you with the landscape or creature that you are viewing.

I have always been influenced by the tones of nature, be they the purples of the autumn heathland where I grew up or the olive-green of hares within a winter field. It is these qualities that reach out to me from prints and paintings, along with subtle shapes that bring life to birds or animals captured in two or three dimensions, shapes that echo my own recollections of seeing these creatures in the field.

Art is very much about personal taste; being able to view a group show in a gallery provides the opportunity to discover what it is that you most connect with. As well as the grand opportunities provided by the art marquee at the BirdFair in August or the SWLA show in London in September, there are local galleries – notably at Cley, Glandford and Lavenham – where you can see a wide range of art by wildlife artists.

The Natural Eye, the 47^th exhibition of the Society of Wildlife Artists, is being held at the Mall Galleries, London from Wednesday 22^nd September until Saturday 2^nd October. For more information, visit www.swla.co.uk

The song of the land

The countryside has a tremendous wealth to offer. Being in the countryside, immersing yourself in the nature around you, is spiritually uplifting and emotionally restorative. You only have to look at our rich literary heritage to witness the strength of emotional response that authors and poets display in those works that draw on the countryside and the wildlife it supports. You don’t even have to understand how it all fits together; you can just plug yourself in and appreciate its existence. These thoughts struck me the other day, not while I was out in the countryside but while I was watching a new short film by Norfolk filmmaker John Snape. The film portrays our countryside through music, poetry and writing, picking out some of the most poignant and engaging prose as it does so. From Meredith’s description of a hunting barn owl “..lovely are the curves of the white owl sweeping…” through to Francis Harvey’s heron that “… settles wrapped and murderous… the hermit who daily petrifies himself in the reeds…”  the poems draw out memories by adding carefully observed description to scenes that I too have witnessed over the years.

Part of the film focuses on the life and poetry of John Clare. Clare, born in 1793 to virtually illiterate parents, enjoyed brief success as a poet in his lifetime but it is only more recently that his true greatness has been acknowledged. Working as a farm labourer, Clare was no mere observer of the natural world around him. Instead he was immersed within it and his intimate knowledge of birds, plants and animals sets him apart from other writers. The influence of being within and part of the countryside can be seen in Clare’s poetry. His early works are a joyful celebration of nature, with his subjects stirring strong responses in this peasant poet. Yet his later works take on the increasing sense of loss that Clare felt as he witnessed the countryside disintegrate with enclosure and agricultural improvement. Such loss weighed heavy on this sensitive man and he ended his days in an asylum. It seems to me that the binding interaction between the countryside and those that seek to immerse themselves within it is a double-edged sword. Moments of sheer joy, like the pleasure derived from listening to a nightingale, are balanced by the heartache of seeing the countryside despoiled as we place greater demands upon it. However, such is the vitality of nature that there will always be some small thing with which you can engage to generate an uplifting emotional response. John Snape’s film provides many such moments and is well worth a viewing (Telephone John on 01263-768599 for more details – proceeds to Norfolk Wildlife Trust).