Curlew Moon

‘Focuses a razor light on the plight of one of our most iconic birds. Inspirational!’ Tim Birkhead Curlews are Britain’s largest wading bird, known for their evocative calls which embody wild places; they provoke a range of emotions that many have expressed in poetry, art and music.

Christians often don't know how to respond to the climate crisis and messages of possible destruction caused by human activity. Frances Ward shows how Christians can live and act with hope and faith in God in the face of eco-anxiety.

In the spring of 1983 Terry Tempest Williams learned that her mother was dying of cancer. That same season, The Great Salt Lake began to rise to record heights, threatening the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge and the herons, owls, and snowy egrets that Williams, a poet and naturalist, had come to gauge her life by. One event was nature at its most random, the other a by-product of rogue technology: Terry's mother, and Terry herself, had been exposed to the fallout of atomic bomb tests in the 1950s. As it interweaves these narratives of dying and accommodation, Refuge transforms tragedy into a document of renewal and spiritual grace, resulting in a work that has become a classic.

In 2019, Gwen Wilkinson set herself the challenge of building a canoe and paddling it the length of Ireland, along a network of inland waterways. She set out from the shores of Lough Erne and navigated a 400 km journey to the tidal waters of the River Barrow in Ireland. More than just a travelogue, The Waters and the Wild explores the interwoven histories of the people and wildlife that shaped Gwen’s journey. As the adventure unfolds, she also shines a light on pioneering women who have left their mark on Ireland’s landscape – both natural and cultural. From wild camping on deserted islands to drifting on lakes in the company of restless lapwings, this book invites the reader to share an intense engagement with the natural world. The charming text is accompanied by the author’s own striking lino and woodcut prints, beautiful and though-provoking interpretations of the flora and fauna she observed on her travels.

‘A must read for all wildlife lovers’ Dominic Dyer Foxes, buzzards, crows, badgers, weasels, seals, kites – Britain and Ireland’s predators are impressive and diverse and they capture our collective imagination. But many consider them to our competition, even our enemies.

In this multi-volume edition, the poetry of W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) is presented in full, with newly established texts and detailed, wide-ranging commentary. Yeats began to write verse in the nineteenth century, and over time his own arrangements of poems repeatedly revised and rearranged both texts and canon. This edition of Yeats’s poetry presents all his verse, both published and unpublished, including a generous selection of textual variants from the many manuscript and printed sources. The edition also supplies the most extensive commentary on Yeats’s poetry to date, explaining specific references, and setting poems in their contexts; it also gives an account of the vast range of both literary and historical influences at work on the verse. The poems are presented in order of composition, and major revisions or rewritings of poems result in separate inclusions (in chronological sequence) for these writings as they were subsequently reconceived by the poet. In this third volume, Yeats’s poetry of the first decade of the twentieth century is brought into sharp focus, revealing the extent of his efforts to re-fashion a style that had already made him a well-known poet. All of the major modes in Yeats’s earlier work are subject to radical re-imagining in these years, from poetic narrative founded in Irish myth, in poems such as ‘Baile and Aillinn’ and ‘The Old Age of Queen Maeve’, to the symbolist drama-poetry of The Shadowy Waters, here edited in its two (completely different) versions of 1900 and 1906. In a decade when the theatre was one of Yeats’s principal concerns, his lyric poems, which were becoming increasingly explicit in personal terms, began to discover new intensities of conversational pitch and mythic resonance. Poems such as ‘The Folly of Being Comforted’, ‘Adam’s Curse’, ‘No Second Troy’, and ‘The Fascination of What’s Difficult’ are given close attention in this new edition, alongside topical and epigrammatic pieces that are often passed over in accounts of Yeats’s development. The evolving complexities of Yeats’s personal and political lives are crucial to his artistic growth in these years, and the commentary gives these generous attention, showing how the poetry both feeds upon and often transcends the circumstances of its composition. The volume offers strong evidence for this decade as a crucial one in Yeats’s poetic life, in which the poet created wholly new registers for his verse as well as new dimensions for his imaginative vision.

A philosophical discussion about the meanings of nature which can give rise to our motivations to conserve nature.

'Deeply poetic.' CAROLINE LUCAS MP 'A masterpiece of storytelling.' NICK MAYHEW-SMITH 'Mary Colwell is a candle of open-minded curiosity.' PATRICK LAURIE 'An unforgettable story.' MICHAEL MCCARTHY 'Inspiring.' JEREMY MYNOTT 'Brave, tough and surprisingly funny.' ROGER MORGAN-GRENVILLE - Mary Colwell makes a 500-mile solo pilgrimage along the Camino Francés, winding through forests, mountains, farmland, industrial sprawls and places of worship, weaving her experiences of the Camino with natural history, spirituality and modern environmentalism. Pilgrims have always walked in times of upheaval, pitching themselves against weather, hunger, thirst and sometimes pain as they tread the paths their ancestors followed before them. In The Gathering Place, author, nature campaigner and veteran solo walker Mary Colwell undertakes a 500-mile pilgrimage along the Camino Francés in northern Spain at a unique moment in history – a time of pandemic, profound political change, and a climate and biodiversity emergency. In a typical year, more than 300,000 people walk this route or part of it, but in between lockdowns in 2020, Mary was virtually alone. The modern world weaves in and out of the Camino's worn trackway, providing a focus for contemplation and a place where memories and experiences can gather. There are times of intense spirituality, meetings with a demon slayer, strange goings-on and magical tales, and the constant backdrop of nature with all its complexity and wonder. In this delightful book, Mary's winter pilgrimage weaves a personal tale with a walk that millions have undertaken over the centuries. The Gathering Place is a beautiful, thoughtful and, at times, humorous journey of both body and soul.