'Only one bat All senses are stretched beyond time.'
Daphne Astor reveals her experience of twilight brooding during Covid through field notes, sound recordings and poetry.
Daphne Astor is an American-born British conservationist and farmer working with literary and visual arts organisations in the UK since 1977. In 2016-2017 she founded and curated Poetry in Aldeburgh, she is currently chairperson of C4RD and was a long-term trustee of the Poetry School. Her poetry has appeared in several anthologies and magazines including Magma, Finished Creatures and Coast to Coast to Coast. She is publisher and editor of Hazel Press.
Poems and video © Daphne Astor 2021
beautiful! Love the blending of the sensual and the thoughtful – some arresting images, notably the winter ones, the one with moon in the trees and the final image and the final line of poetry – stunning. The brooding notes scrolling gave a sense of the year passing, like the way your field notes reference the wider world – covid, injections, election. And there was humour! ‘Maria Callas of owls’ indeed! Such great bird song and honking geese! A triumph!
This is visually and sonically so powerful: a combination of strength and fragility at the same time. Besides the sheer pleasure of seeing–and how superb these sights are!–and the beauty of the poetry and the bird sounds and so much else, there is the richness of the natural world felt with the new tempo of lockdown, a change of pace that has offered so much to so many. What a breathtaking achievement.
An incisive tour of beautiful ramblings. Primal poetics.
This is mesmerizing! The descriptions range from fanciful to “scientific”…all of which are magical. I especially like the November 5 photo of trees against a large cloud, and the sounds.
A pleasure to stop and listen and immerse myself in the infinite workings of nature