A Black Forked Toad

September 17, 2018September 24, 20182 Comments

‘Llyffan du gaflaw
cant ewin arnaw’

‘A black forked toad:
a hundred claws upon him’
The Battle of the Trees

As dusk darkens the skies
a black forked toad will rise

from his underworld throne
beneath a cold dark stone,

slow, ponderous, alone,
napes filled with poison,

his long and roving tongue
seeking souls old and young.

His hundred trailing claws
with shrieks like owls will score

the black and tarmaced roads
that killed a hundred toads –

green, brown, grey, mottled, black,
males riding piggy-back

in a sacred parade
plodding to pools to mate.

He will trawl the cracked roads
where cars crash and explode,

movement drawing the lick
of his lips before the flick

of that forked tongue lashes
whip-like, savage, catches

the fleeing souls. No-one
will escape his mouth – run

hide, stand, fight, parry, miss.
One gulp they will be his.

When falls the last swallow
toothless he will swallow

everything that moves.

‘He will trawl the cracked roads / where cars crash and explode’

Review: Creatures by Greg Hill

November 15, 2014November 16, 20143 Comments

Greg Hill lives in Wales. He was editor of The Anglo-Welsh Review and contributes regularly to Welsh literary magazines. I’ve followed his blog for a while and was delighted when I heard about the release of his first full length collection of poetry in print; Creatures.

The title alone creates intrigue. What kind of creatures? The epigraph replies; ‘All creaturely things… Plants growing, / Roads running, / Rivers flowing, / Places that sing.’ It is clear from the outset this collection is about an animate landscape where every being is a creature, alive and sentient.

The first ekphrastic poem is based on the picture on the cover; Fidelma Massey’s sculpture, ‘Water Mother,’ who dreams thoughts of water into being. Here, the ‘cosmic ebb and flow’ of thought and water is contained in the poem. Analogies between living water and perception recur throughout the book. In ‘Cwm Eleri’ the poem’s tight structure fails to contain the river, which slips from grasp like time. In ‘Myddleton’s River’ water-ways link London, Wales and the underworld, forming a conduit for complicated alchemical processes of mental and physical transformation.

The contrast between our immediate perception of creatures and those aspects of their being impossible to grasp is central. A jackdaw sitting happily in the hearth becomes ‘an image… a token of wildness… like a jigsaw piece from another puzzle;’ a homely and familiar event made strange. Greg writes that as a heron dips out of sight ‘a part of me fell out of the sky with it,’ lost ‘except that something / settles in the flow of these words.’ We can never completely grasp our perceptions. Only through words can they find permanent representation.

Several poems present roads, paths and boundaries as living entities and how our understanding of them shifts once they are crossed and they slip into memory. If we try to return, the roads are ‘dull,’ ‘dusty,’ ‘empty.’ Our former selves are shadows, unfamiliar reflections. ‘Strange border guards’ usher us ‘from what / we neither know nor recognise.’ These haunting and complex poems demonstrate how choices shape our relationship with the landscape and hence our memories.

The mysteries of the Bardic Tradition and its creatures are explored in novel ways. ‘Awen’ depicts a shepherd lad inspired to speak poetry by a spirit ‘like a forest god’ who is elusive as the words he inspires. Four episodes from the Mabinogion are covered. I was fascinated by ‘A Scaffold for a Mouse,’ which depicts ‘Manawydan living in a dream / landscape with the life / conjured out of it like a flat plane.’ Through his ‘firm grip’ on the mouse, ‘a small thing / for a great purpose,’ he breaks the ‘powerful magic’ of Llwyd, awakening ‘form to its true nature’ thus freeing Rhiannon, Pryderi and Cigfa.

This collection depicts a relationship with the creaturely world that is on the surface simple and direct yet beneath mysterious and disconcerting. Each time I return to these poems I discover new meanings and thematic relationships within the whole. I’d recommend this book to anybody who likes poetry with lots of depth and has a love for nature, myth and creatures.

Creatures can be purchased through Lulu here: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/greghillpoetry

Greg Hill’s poetry site is here: http://greghill.weebly.com/
Greg’s blog, Hill’s Chroicle can be found here: http://hills-chronicle.blogspot.co.uk/

Penwortham By-Pass and the City Deal

September 9, 20142 Comments

Today I went to a consultation organised by South Ribble Borough Council at Kingsfold Community Centre about changes to the planning of a new section of Penwortham By-pass. When I received an invitation through the post I was surprised as this was the first time I had been made aware of the original plan, let alone the new one.

The rescinded route was to run from Broad Oak Roundabout in Penwortham, across Lindle Lane, several fields, part of Bamford’s Wood, then across Saunders Lane to join a new roundabout on the A59 close to Chapel Lane in Longton.

Penwortham By-pass Original Rescinded Route

Rescinded Route, Courtesy of South Ribble Borough Council

The new route will run from Broad Oak Roundabout, north of Lindle Lane and just north of Mill Brook. After crossing a series of fields it will join the A59 near to Howick Cross.

New Route, Courtesy of South Ribble Borough Council

The proposal (1) states an extra section of by-pass is needed to divert traffic away from Penwortham and residential and shopping areas on the A59, to improve conditions for residents, pedestrians and cyclists and reduce road casualties.

Reasons for the change of plan include not demolishing five houses; a smaller environmental impact with less loss of land; half a mile shorter; a more direct route to a new Ribble crossing.

All well and good. But why do we ‘need’ this new stretch of by-pass in the first place? This assumption is based on the premise that we need to prioritise economic development. This is the purpose of the City Deal.

‘The Preston, South Ribble and Lancashire City Deal is an ambitious programme of work that builds on the strong economic performance of the area over the last ten years and will help ensure the area continues to grow by addressing major transport issues to deliver new jobs and housing. Over a ten-year period the deal will generate more than 20,000 jobs, over 17,000 homes and more importantly grow the local economy. With the funding certainty it brings, we are able to deliver these transport improvements sooner we would otherwise be able to. This means new homes and jobs can come sooner and we can reduce congestion on existing roads and improve areas for communities and road users.’

Let’s pause to look at the bigger picture. This is a map of the overall plan for the City Deal over the next ten years.

City Deal Map, courtesy of South Ribble Borough Council

The piece of by-pass in question is outlined in darker red close to the number 4. Its ultimate aim is to link to a new piece of road from Howick Cross to a new bridge over the River Ribble, across Lea Marsh to join the M55 at Swillbrook.

Lea Marsh is home to numerous birds and an area of environmental importance. I was assured that if it was built on, another nature reserve would be created in its place. Surely there can be no real compensation for an irreplaceable piece of land and its inhabitants?

This new piece of road will improve access to BAE and other businesses at Warton. BAE play a major part in the Lancashire Enterprise Partnership (2).

I found it somewhat chilling when I learnt this was the reason there was no junction built on the M55. It seems this was all been planned a long, long time ahead…

I’ve got a form to fill out now. Aside from minor details my only real chance to share my opinion is in a box labelled ‘Please tell us any issues that you think may affect our proposed route for the completion of Penwortham By-pass.’

There is no clear room for objection; to the by-pass or to the premise that economic development is the right or only way forward.

There is no way of arguing for alternative improvements to public transport. ‘Even with a greater investment in public transport, cycling and walking, our current roads will not be able to cope.’

It seems this consultation is a symbolic gesture and the decision that we must have one road or the other has already been made far in advance.

(1) City Deal, Preston, South Ribble and Lancashire, Share your views on the proposals for the completion of Penwortham By-pass (August 2014)
(2) http://www.lancashirelep.co.uk/media/8787/LEP-growth-plan.pdf p10

Birch Wood

July 1, 2013May 23, 20144 Comments

There was a land of ash with no future.
Out of the ice age they came, colonizers
Silver-black and delicately snake skinned,
Shedding white edged leaves on the ash-clad winds

And singing do you remember, remember
The ice age and peat and lost Vindolanda,
Sentinel cities and burying oaths
Enstyled on bright birch to placate the world?

And singing do you remember, remember
The strange black peal of the blacksmith’s hammer,
Street lights of amber and echoing roads,
Cities estranged by the gathering smoke?

And singing do you remember, remember
How empire fell that fatal November,
Civilized monuments crashing to dust,
Swaying white fields and the soft song of ghosts?

Silver-black and delicately snake skinned,
Shedding white edged leaves on the ash-clad winds
Out of the ice age they came, colonizers.
Their land was ash, with an unknown future.

Calling

March 9, 2013May 23, 2014Leave a comment

Before my calling I slept in a glass coffin.
No-one knew if I was live or dead until
I raised my head. And still they are pondering.

Whilst I slept I watched processions
of black clad men carrying coffins,
who march here still putting time
to death, brief as dragonflies.

Their echo beats loud. In woodlands
at March I search for a heartbeat, whilst
mad winds whirl the winter skies overhead.

Roads steal sound. Pylons warp every sense.
Yet when I look the past in the eye it looks back.
They need us now as much as we need them
and the people of the future need us again.

For live or dead there is no rest, no place
to hide nor coffins left, only time processing
through both worlds to a fathomless end.