[Music]
straight to us elephant not nice below
the sea of pine and oak and thorn
yet-unnamed loch ness sparkles in its
glen the elephant cal has tall as three
men don’t bulk him by the great
Hawthorne wall pushes smooth white tests
like ivory needles through the branching
bowels long shafts as straight as poles
until their end curved tips tusks to
frame that trunk that grasps and shears
the spike stems I hold my Flint headed
spear motionless hands dry held breath
there’s still a certain death should she
sends me where I crouched unseen I’ve
never felt before such power presence
she knows I’m here feels my fear even
hotels are in sanh by my being yet the
matriarch for the long straight tusks
moves on into deeper darker wood my in
substantial body drops dead down and a
lie along while sir in silence before I
move to back to the coming world the
whittling world not men I’ve been
writing a series of poems many
variations on the sonnet form so long
sonnets short science 20 land silence
about human encounters with extinct
animals human encounters with animals
that and they could not possibly have
have seen in their lifetimes
at present animals made extinct they
once roamed the British Isles writing
poems like this
I’m writing them in the first person and
writing plans like this was quite
accidental I was writing a novel where
my main character came academic named
Richard he is interested in ecological
restoration rewilding reforesting and
he’s visiting the last remaining
woodlands of Britain human wood lands he
experiences a series of seizures
possibly epileptic seizures possibly
brain tumor seizures but he experiences
a series of seizures that are quite
visionary where he seemed somehow to
have been twinned with a Paleolithic
artist and when he wakes from his
seizure state from his former semi semi
comatose state
he finds he’s written an entire poem and
the poem describes a meeting a realistic
meeting with some animal that once
walked that area but it’s long since
been gone
so hence Richard’s accidental poems of
extinction and there’s the strength task
elephant now let’s tell you that Richard
didn’t write any of those poems he’s a
character in a novel so to writing you
the poems I had to research the extinct
animals and then start writing and for
each of the poems I had to imagine what
it might have been like to have been a
stone-age individual coming across an
animal which may have even been on the
verge of extinction even then and
sometimes a dangerous animal certainly a
rare animal and what the feeling would
have been like what kind of strong
emotional response would have been
engendered in that individual what would
it feel like to suddenly come across a
woolly mammoth what would it feel like
to come across the stone straight tusks
elephant in the Stone Age we’re all your
only weapon is a float spear or if
you’re an artist your only weapon is
your little bag of paint and some paint
brushes so I’ve always been interested
in human animal encounter poetry
now Ted Hughes D H Lawrence snake and
chant hughes and otter there is almost a
sub-genre in poetry on human animal
encounters but they’re not a lot of
human extinct animal encounters in
poetry possibly the reason is that poets
tend to write about what they can
experience and it’s very hard to
experience an animal that your
predecessors have wiped from the face of
the planet so when I started googling
POE homes with extinction of work out
but a write Richards poem spring so
let’s see I googled poetry of extinction
there isn’t much bones extinct animals
there aren’t many and how do you write
poems of extinct animals that you have
to imagine them so in each case I had to
put myself into the place of possibly
Richards pay you to think twin and see
what it would have been like to meet
that animal and along the way I must
tell you that I found it fascinating
doing the research for each of the poems
that’s that’s the start of the thing
it’s fascinating reading about the
animals that once roamed Britain they
were here until a very short time ago
geologically speaking an eyeblink
historically speaking only a few
thousand years and we’ve managed to wipe
them out in quite an alarmingly short
time so when I said to writing I was
unprepared for the depth of feeling that
I would experience about the meeting of
some Stone Age individual and an extinct
animal I could have had no contact with
and I wondered if readers might find it
similarly just if some readers might
experience an emotional connection for
the first time between an extinct animal
and themselves and then fit me to
wondering as well would would that help
to stimulate some sort of thinking about
what atolls are going to be made extinct
in their own lifetimes that was a
question
perhaps they might even be interested in
stemming extinction perhaps they might
be interested in reducing some of the
animals that we’ve lost from the British
landscape back into the British
landscape
so it was just starting the process of
writing these poems was an interesting
thing entirely so some of the books some
of the animals that my character
Richards twin meets or my character
Richard meets by his strange Cedars in
the forest Oh
animals that we can bring back things
that have been made locally extinct like
for wool and beaver all and they’re all
links or wolf some of them have been
made extinct forever such as I’ll
remember when you encounter what
another thing that’s set me thinking
with writing these poems was surely
there will be other poets and better
poets who can write poems about
presently endangered animals
not so much extinct animals but what
about animals are endangered now and
ones that that really established poet
really cares about wouldn’t that help
the public to care about the animal
that’s about to disappear from the face
of the earth
so to save an animal such as the Rhino
when needs to have enough members of the
public to care about to know the sense
all in front might experience when when
it captures one of these animals
unexpectedly almost nose-to-nose and
almost face to face in the wild that
happened to me about a year and a half
ago almost literally bumping into this
black rhino who was not impressed and
let’s know it and that it was an amazing
encounter and it’s an amazing experience
when you meet an animal in the wild and
it’s powerful and it doesn’t really care
about you you’re not part of its world
there’s a certain magic in an experience
such as that so I was hoping other poets
might actually get second to the same
kind of thing now I’m not the only one
to have an experience with rhinoceros
Richard fifteen thousand years ago on
the Jurassic Coast had an experience
where he also made some rhinoceroses and
then year Lyme Regis today there but
Landry just wasn’t there at that stage
and the woolly rhinoceros is are not
there either
and that’s the point and visitors to the
Jurassic Coast
looking for puzzles they know the
fossils of animals that went away 65
million years ago around and 65 million
years ago they don’t think about the
animals that went away ten thousand
years ago three thousand years ago two
thousand years ago one thousand years
ago these ones only disappeared from the
British landscape about ten thousand
years ago that’s that’s an eye blink so
that’s the woolly rhinoceros and when
you do come across some animal like that
you you realize you’re meeting a unique
animal from unique species and it’s
taken billions of years not just
millions but billions of you this all
considered for that exact animal to be
in that exact place but we seem to wipe
them out with the lambing regularity and
very very fast so I was wondering could
it be possible but some of these
problems might be useful to stem the
tide of extinction good reading poetry
actually help people decide they want to
save some animals that are still alive
now that they might not have otherwise
thought of well I must tell you that
researching for these poems that I was
amazed at the diversity of species we
used to have here fifty thousand years
ago and then even ten thousand years ago
a thousand years ago far more species
and subspecies than we have now
we may have species live not many but
very few subspecies of loads so that was
no spider shot realizing what when the
incredibly impoverished ecosystem we
have the next thing just downed me plus
the sheer size of some of these animals
that we’ve lost the less materials this
may have given rise to the legend of the
unicorn the Alessa theorem was the size
of a mammoth could gallop like a horse
one horn and how would you like to meet
that on say the plains of great the
great savanna of dinner it would be fun
and I was terribly sad that we’d lost
animals like this and that we can never
have them again once something like that
is gone it’s gone we’re not going to
recreate it the third thing that
absolutely astounded me was the unique
strangeness the
Zubrin strangeness of some of these
animals that we’ve lost and then I
thought wow we’re losing animals fast
what happens in in 21 16 audio hundred
years from now maybe people then will be
thinking wow elephants giraffes look out
strange there must have been it could
happen the IUCN or the International
Union for the Conservation of Nature
says that half of our 5,500 mammal
species are in decline we could face the
situation where a thousand mammal
species go extinct in the next 100 years
they should be shocking figures and
something radical it’s going to be done
so I was terribly disturbed the week
that we could have raised so quickly
such an amazing array of mammal species
of animal species and I was only
investigating mammals and birds and in
truth mainly the big mammals I just
thought we even published our landscape
and our human experience so much already
we need to stem extinction now and do it
forever and to do so we need to do
something radically different from what
we have been doing in conservation and
researching – the poem has made me aware
of the huge crisis of extinction facing
the wild species we do have left they
are going fast and mainly from well
hunting and poaching yes but mainly from
the loss of habitat as the global human
footprint of clearing while more and
more wild and semi wild land for
commercial exploitation expands at a
rapid clip everything we use comes from
somewhere and it’s usually coming from
somewhere that used to be wild so I
wondered if I could build into each poem
some way of eliciting an emotional
connection between the reader the place
and the extinct animal and so into each
sonnet because they’re mainly sonnets
although they’re strange sonnets into
each sonnets I’ve built a recognizable
British landmark and then I’m in the
hope that when a reader reads one of the
poems they will connect the gray wolf
and the Brecon Beacons
the cave there in Yorkshire you know the
cave hyena somewhere else this cave high
in in Plymouth and all the links in
between the great sarsen stones of
Stonehenge my thought was what if a
young person reading about her links
making it kill in between the great
stones at Stonehenge as an adult works
tirelessly to reproduce the Eurasian
Lynx to a reworded Dartmoor or reworded
Campbell’s or real wooded Brecon Beacons
there to be inspiration so one of these
Richard’s poems my plans Richards bones
could actually make a difference so in
fact there’s our Eurasian Lynx
that’s a recent cave painting and
perhaps someone would be inspired by a
poem about the Oryx the giant wild
species of cattle that we once had in
Britain also bulls have stood six foot
or more at the shoulder that’s an
impressive sight if you’re going to run
across a field that’s a good one to run
from and apparently they would attack
you mercilessly if you are on a horse
and if you had a weapon then if you are
unarmed they would leave you alone
that’s the legend anyway so and my poem
for ox or Rich’s foam or ox in goldfuss
the twenty-ninth silent or oxen goldfuss
is a sonnet about paint and painted at
the artist peeking mica flakes out of
the cliff on the priests RHC sure that
eventually becomes the town of gold
cliff in Wales don’t look film now
because they’ve been covered in
limestone but here it is Horrocks gold
cliffs I worked in silence at the club
space because the bull was near guarding
his calves magnificent in his muscled
wildness
white eel stripes no line down his
charcoal back proud bull king to his
chestnut harem hurt grazing said shoots
with his calves by the stream
then at sunset my pouch only 1/3 filled
with shining flakes like dragonflies
wings the other ball came and I and the
King could read the jet strength judge
the young bull size tall at the shoulder
his chest as broad as the king’s smooth
flanks yet unscarred by lions great
belly and balls the princely horns
thrust high they felt you as the Sun
blazed out in fire they drowned the
darkening swish of the sea with their
bellowing crash of horns on horns and
though I could not see it’s red the reek
of blood from each torn – Floyd in my
mouth on and on that it was done and
quiet as death but for the rasp of one
will spring the last for us bully last
works died in captivity in 1627 but it’s
gone and it’s gone forever no matter how
many back freedom private programs there
on the zero and my hope is that the son
of Richard sighs might inspire someone
prep someone here might Sharon someone
here to make sure we don’t lose the
European bison or the brown bear or the
Griffon vulture all moving further
revealed African elephant or the Oryx or
the polar bear or insert animal name of
your choice here because they are all up
for grabs
I do believe there is a viable and very
simple antidote to further extinction
the ecologist Hyo Wilson has proposed
the concept of half earth but is half
the world’s surface to be set aside for
wild nature commercialized only in ways
that increase the diversity and the
wildness
of the native species of plant and
animal in that landscape I do believe
that is the last hope that humanity has
of saving the wild patience that we
still have left I do believe that that
is a challenge it also measures very
well with the rewilding movements idea
of restoration of the landscape
ecological restoration replanting
reforesting reproduction of species that
once were there what can we do we can
support local projects and international
projects and aim to create wild land or
recreate wild land or regrow wild
territories to protect wild species so
Richard imposing Richards accidental
poems of the extinction well unplanned
well had asked for I didn’t really want
to write poems they horrified me that
weary killed off so many iconic species
and and they horrified me at the scale
of extinction that we worry unleashed on
the planet however I hope that his poems
may inspire anyone who reads them to
know that extinction is forever yet
there is a viable solution our challenge
is to rewire and reforest and restore
ecologically those landscapes we still
have left semi wild landscapes tamed
landscapes restore them to being wild
scapes once again fast enough to stop
the last species we have from going on
the same path that we pushed the dodo
the Oryx and the straight tail the
Straits test effort thank you
[Applause]
you
straight to us elephant not nice below
the sea of pine and oak and thorn
yet-unnamed loch ness sparkles in its
glen the elephant cal has tall as three
men don’t bulk him by the great
Hawthorne wall pushes smooth white tests
like ivory needles through the branching
bowels long shafts as straight as poles
until their end curved tips tusks to
frame that trunk that grasps and shears
the spike stems I hold my Flint headed
spear motionless hands dry held breath
there’s still a certain death should she
sends me where I crouched unseen I’ve
never felt before such power presence
she knows I’m here feels my fear even
hotels are in sanh by my being yet the
matriarch for the long straight tusks
moves on into deeper darker wood my in
substantial body drops dead down and a
lie along while sir in silence before I
move to back to the coming world the
whittling world not men I’ve been
writing a series of poems many
variations on the sonnet form so long
sonnets short science 20 land silence
about human encounters with extinct
animals human encounters with animals
that and they could not possibly have
have seen in their lifetimes
at present animals made extinct they
once roamed the British Isles writing
poems like this
I’m writing them in the first person and
writing plans like this was quite
accidental I was writing a novel where
my main character came academic named
Richard he is interested in ecological
restoration rewilding reforesting and
he’s visiting the last remaining
woodlands of Britain human wood lands he
experiences a series of seizures
possibly epileptic seizures possibly
brain tumor seizures but he experiences
a series of seizures that are quite
visionary where he seemed somehow to
have been twinned with a Paleolithic
artist and when he wakes from his
seizure state from his former semi semi
comatose state
he finds he’s written an entire poem and
the poem describes a meeting a realistic
meeting with some animal that once
walked that area but it’s long since
been gone
so hence Richard’s accidental poems of
extinction and there’s the strength task
elephant now let’s tell you that Richard
didn’t write any of those poems he’s a
character in a novel so to writing you
the poems I had to research the extinct
animals and then start writing and for
each of the poems I had to imagine what
it might have been like to have been a
stone-age individual coming across an
animal which may have even been on the
verge of extinction even then and
sometimes a dangerous animal certainly a
rare animal and what the feeling would
have been like what kind of strong
emotional response would have been
engendered in that individual what would
it feel like to suddenly come across a
woolly mammoth what would it feel like
to come across the stone straight tusks
elephant in the Stone Age we’re all your
only weapon is a float spear or if
you’re an artist your only weapon is
your little bag of paint and some paint
brushes so I’ve always been interested
in human animal encounter poetry
now Ted Hughes D H Lawrence snake and
chant hughes and otter there is almost a
sub-genre in poetry on human animal
encounters but they’re not a lot of
human extinct animal encounters in
poetry possibly the reason is that poets
tend to write about what they can
experience and it’s very hard to
experience an animal that your
predecessors have wiped from the face of
the planet so when I started googling
POE homes with extinction of work out
but a write Richards poem spring so
let’s see I googled poetry of extinction
there isn’t much bones extinct animals
there aren’t many and how do you write
poems of extinct animals that you have
to imagine them so in each case I had to
put myself into the place of possibly
Richards pay you to think twin and see
what it would have been like to meet
that animal and along the way I must
tell you that I found it fascinating
doing the research for each of the poems
that’s that’s the start of the thing
it’s fascinating reading about the
animals that once roamed Britain they
were here until a very short time ago
geologically speaking an eyeblink
historically speaking only a few
thousand years and we’ve managed to wipe
them out in quite an alarmingly short
time so when I said to writing I was
unprepared for the depth of feeling that
I would experience about the meeting of
some Stone Age individual and an extinct
animal I could have had no contact with
and I wondered if readers might find it
similarly just if some readers might
experience an emotional connection for
the first time between an extinct animal
and themselves and then fit me to
wondering as well would would that help
to stimulate some sort of thinking about
what atolls are going to be made extinct
in their own lifetimes that was a
question
perhaps they might even be interested in
stemming extinction perhaps they might
be interested in reducing some of the
animals that we’ve lost from the British
landscape back into the British
landscape
so it was just starting the process of
writing these poems was an interesting
thing entirely so some of the books some
of the animals that my character
Richards twin meets or my character
Richard meets by his strange Cedars in
the forest Oh
animals that we can bring back things
that have been made locally extinct like
for wool and beaver all and they’re all
links or wolf some of them have been
made extinct forever such as I’ll
remember when you encounter what
another thing that’s set me thinking
with writing these poems was surely
there will be other poets and better
poets who can write poems about
presently endangered animals
not so much extinct animals but what
about animals are endangered now and
ones that that really established poet
really cares about wouldn’t that help
the public to care about the animal
that’s about to disappear from the face
of the earth
so to save an animal such as the Rhino
when needs to have enough members of the
public to care about to know the sense
all in front might experience when when
it captures one of these animals
unexpectedly almost nose-to-nose and
almost face to face in the wild that
happened to me about a year and a half
ago almost literally bumping into this
black rhino who was not impressed and
let’s know it and that it was an amazing
encounter and it’s an amazing experience
when you meet an animal in the wild and
it’s powerful and it doesn’t really care
about you you’re not part of its world
there’s a certain magic in an experience
such as that so I was hoping other poets
might actually get second to the same
kind of thing now I’m not the only one
to have an experience with rhinoceros
Richard fifteen thousand years ago on
the Jurassic Coast had an experience
where he also made some rhinoceroses and
then year Lyme Regis today there but
Landry just wasn’t there at that stage
and the woolly rhinoceros is are not
there either
and that’s the point and visitors to the
Jurassic Coast
looking for puzzles they know the
fossils of animals that went away 65
million years ago around and 65 million
years ago they don’t think about the
animals that went away ten thousand
years ago three thousand years ago two
thousand years ago one thousand years
ago these ones only disappeared from the
British landscape about ten thousand
years ago that’s that’s an eye blink so
that’s the woolly rhinoceros and when
you do come across some animal like that
you you realize you’re meeting a unique
animal from unique species and it’s
taken billions of years not just
millions but billions of you this all
considered for that exact animal to be
in that exact place but we seem to wipe
them out with the lambing regularity and
very very fast so I was wondering could
it be possible but some of these
problems might be useful to stem the
tide of extinction good reading poetry
actually help people decide they want to
save some animals that are still alive
now that they might not have otherwise
thought of well I must tell you that
researching for these poems that I was
amazed at the diversity of species we
used to have here fifty thousand years
ago and then even ten thousand years ago
a thousand years ago far more species
and subspecies than we have now
we may have species live not many but
very few subspecies of loads so that was
no spider shot realizing what when the
incredibly impoverished ecosystem we
have the next thing just downed me plus
the sheer size of some of these animals
that we’ve lost the less materials this
may have given rise to the legend of the
unicorn the Alessa theorem was the size
of a mammoth could gallop like a horse
one horn and how would you like to meet
that on say the plains of great the
great savanna of dinner it would be fun
and I was terribly sad that we’d lost
animals like this and that we can never
have them again once something like that
is gone it’s gone we’re not going to
recreate it the third thing that
absolutely astounded me was the unique
strangeness the
Zubrin strangeness of some of these
animals that we’ve lost and then I
thought wow we’re losing animals fast
what happens in in 21 16 audio hundred
years from now maybe people then will be
thinking wow elephants giraffes look out
strange there must have been it could
happen the IUCN or the International
Union for the Conservation of Nature
says that half of our 5,500 mammal
species are in decline we could face the
situation where a thousand mammal
species go extinct in the next 100 years
they should be shocking figures and
something radical it’s going to be done
so I was terribly disturbed the week
that we could have raised so quickly
such an amazing array of mammal species
of animal species and I was only
investigating mammals and birds and in
truth mainly the big mammals I just
thought we even published our landscape
and our human experience so much already
we need to stem extinction now and do it
forever and to do so we need to do
something radically different from what
we have been doing in conservation and
researching – the poem has made me aware
of the huge crisis of extinction facing
the wild species we do have left they
are going fast and mainly from well
hunting and poaching yes but mainly from
the loss of habitat as the global human
footprint of clearing while more and
more wild and semi wild land for
commercial exploitation expands at a
rapid clip everything we use comes from
somewhere and it’s usually coming from
somewhere that used to be wild so I
wondered if I could build into each poem
some way of eliciting an emotional
connection between the reader the place
and the extinct animal and so into each
sonnet because they’re mainly sonnets
although they’re strange sonnets into
each sonnets I’ve built a recognizable
British landmark and then I’m in the
hope that when a reader reads one of the
poems they will connect the gray wolf
and the Brecon Beacons
the cave there in Yorkshire you know the
cave hyena somewhere else this cave high
in in Plymouth and all the links in
between the great sarsen stones of
Stonehenge my thought was what if a
young person reading about her links
making it kill in between the great
stones at Stonehenge as an adult works
tirelessly to reproduce the Eurasian
Lynx to a reworded Dartmoor or reworded
Campbell’s or real wooded Brecon Beacons
there to be inspiration so one of these
Richard’s poems my plans Richards bones
could actually make a difference so in
fact there’s our Eurasian Lynx
that’s a recent cave painting and
perhaps someone would be inspired by a
poem about the Oryx the giant wild
species of cattle that we once had in
Britain also bulls have stood six foot
or more at the shoulder that’s an
impressive sight if you’re going to run
across a field that’s a good one to run
from and apparently they would attack
you mercilessly if you are on a horse
and if you had a weapon then if you are
unarmed they would leave you alone
that’s the legend anyway so and my poem
for ox or Rich’s foam or ox in goldfuss
the twenty-ninth silent or oxen goldfuss
is a sonnet about paint and painted at
the artist peeking mica flakes out of
the cliff on the priests RHC sure that
eventually becomes the town of gold
cliff in Wales don’t look film now
because they’ve been covered in
limestone but here it is Horrocks gold
cliffs I worked in silence at the club
space because the bull was near guarding
his calves magnificent in his muscled
wildness
white eel stripes no line down his
charcoal back proud bull king to his
chestnut harem hurt grazing said shoots
with his calves by the stream
then at sunset my pouch only 1/3 filled
with shining flakes like dragonflies
wings the other ball came and I and the
King could read the jet strength judge
the young bull size tall at the shoulder
his chest as broad as the king’s smooth
flanks yet unscarred by lions great
belly and balls the princely horns
thrust high they felt you as the Sun
blazed out in fire they drowned the
darkening swish of the sea with their
bellowing crash of horns on horns and
though I could not see it’s red the reek
of blood from each torn – Floyd in my
mouth on and on that it was done and
quiet as death but for the rasp of one
will spring the last for us bully last
works died in captivity in 1627 but it’s
gone and it’s gone forever no matter how
many back freedom private programs there
on the zero and my hope is that the son
of Richard sighs might inspire someone
prep someone here might Sharon someone
here to make sure we don’t lose the
European bison or the brown bear or the
Griffon vulture all moving further
revealed African elephant or the Oryx or
the polar bear or insert animal name of
your choice here because they are all up
for grabs
I do believe there is a viable and very
simple antidote to further extinction
the ecologist Hyo Wilson has proposed
the concept of half earth but is half
the world’s surface to be set aside for
wild nature commercialized only in ways
that increase the diversity and the
wildness
of the native species of plant and
animal in that landscape I do believe
that is the last hope that humanity has
of saving the wild patience that we
still have left I do believe that that
is a challenge it also measures very
well with the rewilding movements idea
of restoration of the landscape
ecological restoration replanting
reforesting reproduction of species that
once were there what can we do we can
support local projects and international
projects and aim to create wild land or
recreate wild land or regrow wild
territories to protect wild species so
Richard imposing Richards accidental
poems of the extinction well unplanned
well had asked for I didn’t really want
to write poems they horrified me that
weary killed off so many iconic species
and and they horrified me at the scale
of extinction that we worry unleashed on
the planet however I hope that his poems
may inspire anyone who reads them to
know that extinction is forever yet
there is a viable solution our challenge
is to rewire and reforest and restore
ecologically those landscapes we still
have left semi wild landscapes tamed
landscapes restore them to being wild
scapes once again fast enough to stop
the last species we have from going on
the same path that we pushed the dodo
the Oryx and the straight tail the
Straits test effort thank you
[Applause]
you
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