Can poetry protect the natural world? Can it actually change the course of events? Many poets are attempting to do just that, but it’s not often that a collection is published with a specific purpose, centred on a particular location. Rae Howells’ latest book focuses on West Cross Common, a small area of peat-based heathland on the edge of Swansea, which is currently under threat of development. But these poems do far more than protest. They celebrate the minutiae of a rare and intricate habitat, the kind of inconspicuous scrubland that many of us would normally walk past without a second glance.
The collection opens with an introduction that explains how the poet and her family began exploring West Cross Common during the first lockdown in 2020. They gradually realised that this ‘scrubby little waste ground’ was in fact bursting with life, ‘home to a thrumming, lively ecosystem’. And then a planning application for a new housing development was approved by Swansea City Council. As things stand right now (September 2024) the Welsh Government have been consulting with local residents and campaigners, and a decision has yet to be made on the future of West Cross Common. The campaigners are not denying that affordable housing is needed, they are asking why it must be built on land that is so rich in biodiversity.
After reading this worrying account of an incredible habitat that may soon be lost forever, the poems themselves provide a sense of focus. The first poem, ‘stand’ asks us to pause and consider the common as a living eco-system:
just stop. breathe. listen. skylark, snipe, a grass snake’s slide
through cotton grass. polecat. weasel. an otter’s crunch.
& listen for the things you can’t hear: bog asphodel, marsh fritillary,
orchid, marsh cinquefoil, bogbean, pipistrelle bat.
Poems like this appear to let the common speak for itself, using a slow, deliberate language that enables us to zoom in, to consider the creatures and plants that make this place their home.
Other poems use metaphor, dressing the common up in different guises to reveal aspects of its character. A series of poems beginning with ‘The common as…’ evoke a sense of resilience in the face of injustice. Here is an extract from ‘The common as a mother who is about to lose her children’:
she has that spider sense, her ganglions fused to the map
of each child’s trundles and preoccupations
where the caterpillar gets her snack
or the violet her ditchwater drink.
she stocks the cupboard with their favourite things,
answers their calls, is there when
her goldfinch scaldies shriek open their mouths
for something anything please
There is much lurid and detailed imagery, drawing attention to the very real threat that this habitat must face. But the poems also celebrate the beauty and complexity of the common. Here is an extract from ‘The common as a clockwork toad machine’:
The common is gilled. Its amphibian awareness
never sleeps. Without water it seizes.
Rain is the crank, the croaky ratchet,
waking the unconscious tadpole
in every dark pool.
Such sonic resonance reveals these poems to be far more than a means to an end. There is a celebration of language here, as well as biodiversity; a joyful exuberance in nature, full of assonance and alliteration.
There is also a strong sense of humour that runs throughout the collection, with poems like ‘The common as an old woman waiting at the bus stop’ that are so apt they make you laugh in relief. Another poem titled ‘When adder went to the shops’ expertly weaves humour and despair together in a way that is surprisingly effective. These puns are interspersed with reminders of what has already been, or soon will be, destroyed. In ‘What we could learn from the study of absence’, attention is drawn to the creatures we do not, or can no longer, see:
When they are not there, hares
lie panting like slices of moon on open fields
the road running across their middles
as though softness
was a story you read once
but can’t remember how it ends.
There is a sequence of poems that celebrate the history of the common, bringing to life those people who have lived and worked on it, explored it and examined it over many years. From the drovers who carved pathways into the peat, to the men who practised digging trenches there, during the First World War. And the book closes with a sequence of poems that personify, in turn, some of the flora and fauna that live on West Cross Common. Here is an extract from ‘devil’s-bit scabious’:
butterfly clouds gather, pollen suckers with their easy
pennons, flags aflutter, fritillaries and hoverflies,
you strain your spine for their aerofoil glamour
you are cocked, muster every feather
of your flowers. wish for a surge of wind to lift you
These poems fulfil the author’s aim, stated in the introduction: they ‘give voice to the unheeded – the common itself, the plants and animals that live on it’. But they also dramatize a very real and ongoing tension. This is a book that delights in the small and the inconspicuous, forging a celebratory link between us and the areas of common land that we so often take for granted.
This Common Uncommon by Rae Howells is published by Parthian Books.
This blog post provides details of the campaign to save the common. And there is also a West Cross Common Facebook page.
