Description Share Post Out There in the Wild: Poems on Nature Nicola Davies, James Carter and Dom Conlon, illustrated by Diana Catchpole (Pan Macmillan) ‘There’s a rhythm out there/ there’s a rhythm within/ as the seasons turn/ as the planets spin…‘ Aren’t we all Out There in the Wild, captives of the Sun, within a flow of seasons? Nicola Davies, James Carter and Dom Conlon celebrate OUR place. They urge us to follow our ‘feral-alert’ senses to a ‘conker-fall/ from a field away‘. For example, we might wonder about the owl that hoots as we ‘lie in bed dreading the morning’. Meanwhile, we’re asked to contemplate a world without animal life. So, ‘what will our world be/ With no birds or beasts to share it?’ Alone upon the earth?/ We could not bear it!’ It seems there an urgency to many of these poems, similar to Wonder: The Natural History Museum Poetry Book. Then again, there’s a deep connection, respect and love. In fact, readers understand, through poems that celebrate the life, history and behaviour of the natural world, that ‘all life is sublime concoction’. Then again, rather like Dark Sky Park, the subjects are wide and varied. What’s more, they’re examined intricately. There’s the Mountain Hare, Glow Worms or Woodlice. However, the tone is sombre. We’re asked to ‘Remember the day when we killed the bees,/ and we sent the whales to an early grave?‘ for example. Then again, we’re reminded how we will ‘wonder what the hell we were all doing/ To let the whole world get in such a state‘ when ‘London’s under twenty feet of sea‘. Bookwagon is aflame with this poetry book. Every work is utterly divine, vital and beautiful. We urge our readers to choose Out There in the Wild Poems on Nature.
