Sally starts the podcast with a brief poem by Philip Larkin, a complex poem of springtime, grief, and renewal. The trees all around the boat take Sally’s mind back to the horse chestnut tree of her youth, where she and her brother used to play, and which became a companion to her as she started to read books. A hunt for a pack of pesky wasp invaders, headed by an indignant Queen, ends up with Sally pruning the nearby hawthorn and willow trees, in whose branches the neighbourhood water vole has been spotted, and listening to the chirruping of the birds.

She turns to a work by novelist John Fowles – who, just like Sally, grew up feeling deeply connected to trees, drawing on them for creative inspiration. Arguing passionately for the importance of preserving nature in its wild state, Fowles felt connected to trees all his life, from the orchards of his childhood to the woodlands of Devon and Dorset.

Fowles published his autobiographical book The Tree in 1979, describing nature and writing as interconnected,  “siblings, branches of one tree”.   The book is considered to have created a new genre, “nature-as-memoir”, taken up later by authors including Richard Mabey, who Sally mentions towards the end of the episode.

Mabey, born in 1941, is a pioneering nature-and-culture writer, someone who did a huge amount to bring to public attention the networked, social nature of trees, writing books such as Nature Cure and The Ash and The Beech. The interconnected roots of trees, the way they can communicate with and support each other, has also been explored in books such as The Hidden Life of Trees (by Peter Wohlleben).

The Trees one of the best known poems by the leading 20th century poet Philip Larkin (1922 to 1985), can be found here:

https://poetryarchive.org/poem/trees/

The producer of the podcast is Andrew Smith: https://www.fleetingyearfilms.com

The extra voice in this episode is Emma Fielding.

Thanks to everyone who has supported us so far. Special thanks go to Violet Henderson, Kris Dyer, and Maeve Magnus.