Review: 'The Lost Words' by Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane

This book really doesn't need any help from me. It's already a classic. But I wanted to review it because I love it.

I wanted to read it from the moment I first heard how it was inspired:-- during one of the regular revisions of the Oxford Junior Dictionary, it was decided to exclude certain words, which modern children no longer looked up or needed-- words such as 'bluebell', 'heron,' and 'conker'-- in order to make room for words such as 'broadband' and 'wi'fi'.

The book's wonderful artist, Jackie Morris, was incensed by this. She tells about how the book came about here. (The beautiful picture at the top of this blog is from Jackie's site.)

Many other writers and artists were aghast when they heard about these words being dropped. There is a theory of language that says that when you lose the word for something, you also lose the ability to think about it or consider it important. It becomes something nameless-- and if people haven't even bothered to name something, it can't be important, can it?

Theory apart, how the hell can you dispense with the word 'bluebell'? Every year I go to view the miles of bluebells in the woods on the Clent hills. Somehow, it wouldn't be the same if I walked there thinking, "What a lot of blue flowers."

Rather, when I look down a slope covered with blue and see the blue spreading and filtering through the trees, it adds a lot to know that these are bluebells, wild hyacinths and that such masses of them indicate 'undisturbed ancient woodland.'

But how can  'heron' ever  be considered a word that isn't  necessary in  a children's dictionary? Or dandelion? Dandelion, for god's sake. Dandelion piss-the-bed: dandelion clocks-- how do you even be a child without knowing the word dandelion and what it represents? As well get rid of 'daisy' or 'buttercup.'

I had been trying to work out how to get my paws on a copy of the book, since its beautiful production makes it expensive... While I was still wondering, I saw a tweet from Jackie Morris herself, commenting in surprise that the third Sterkarm book, A Sterkarm Tryst, was in print.

I have a slight aquaintance with Ms. Morris-- I wouldn't presume to claim it to be anything more. So I tweeted back with a suggestion that we do swapsies. I would send her a copy of Tryst (wot I wrote) if she would send me one of The Lost Words.

A Sterkarm Tryst

I think I got the better end of the deal. The book arrived in the post some weeks ago and I have kept it to hand and dipped into it frequently ever since.

It's a much larger book than you might guess from the picture above. And it isn't a book of poems with illustrations. The artist and poet are equals here-- the initial idea came from Jackie Morris and she tells us how writer and artist influenced each other.

Robert Macfarlane, a prize winning poet and writer, has written 'a book of spells'-- the intention being to spell the lost words back into our memories and useage.

Each spell is introduced by a double-page spread where letters blow and tumble among grasses or fern or trees-- as if the lost words were being broken and scattered. Or, perhaps are being called back, spelled back together.

The poems are acrostics, so the word in danger of being lost is spelled, not only in the title, but in the reading and writing of the spell. And the poems are beautiful. The more often you read them--spelling back those lost words-- the more beauty you find in them.

Facing each poem is one of Jackie Morris' rightly celebrated paintings. And then, over the page, a double spread painting-- paintings of acorns, brambles, owls, bluebells, magpies...

 I love the whole book, but I think my favourite part is Bluebell. The beautiful poem is followed by a breathtaking double page showing an owl fleeting and a fox slinking through the dusk of a bluebell wood.

But otters, ravens, newts, willow, adders-- you'll find them all here. Magpies too. I love the magpies who 'gossip, bicker, yak and snicker' in my garden. Love their flying dinosaur shapes, their long tails and petrol blue sheen. Currently they are pulling my hedge to bits for nesting material and flying off towing long streamers of dried grass behind them.

"A proportion of the royalties from each copy of The Lost Words will be donated to Action for Conservation, a charity dedicated to inspiring young people to take action for the natural world.... www.actionforconservation.org"

In Scotland, Jane Beaton has raised £25,000 to give the book to all 2,681 schools in Scotland-- for more about this story, follow this link.

 

Find it on Amazon

Jackie Morris' blog

Susan Price is the author not only of A Sterkarm Tryst, but also of The Sterkarm Handshake and A Sterkarm Kiss-- as well as about 60 other books. You can find out more about them on her website, here.

A Walk On Walton Hill...

Join me in a walk over Walton Hill...It's a steep hill...

But we're here to see the bluebells. We come every year to see the bluebells.

There are two hills on the National Trust property at Clent - Walton Hill and Clent Hill.

 Both are pooled and deep in bluebells at this time of year.







There was a bank whereon the bells spangled blue and white.
 

We walked to the gate at the end of the path.

Gusts of hyacinth scent blew to us on the breeze.

At the gate we turned left and climbed uphill.

'Massed bluebells indicate undisturbed ancient woodland.'

You could see the leaves turning from their true colour of red to green, as they start to produce cholorphyll.

The birds were yelling their heads off again. The great tits were swinging incessantly on that creaky gate of theirs.

And then we went to the pub. You can only take so much overwhelming natural beauty.

Blue As Far As The Eye Can See

          It's that time of the year again - though a bit late - when the bluebells burst out mob-handed and yomp all over the Clent Hills with cerulean yells.

           Streams and rivers of blue pour down the hillsides and pool in hollows.
 

          Whole hillsides are covered: sky-blue sunlight, indigo shadow.

          They mark 'undisturbed ancient woodland,' and in a couple of weeks they'll all be gone.

           No photo can give you the gusts of wild hyacinth scent.
          That's why you have to go and join them, and yell blue with them, while they're here.

 

 

Blue Remembered Clent Hill

I went bluebell looking again for what will probably be the last time this year.  They don't last long.  These views are from Clent Hill.

On Clent Hill, you pass from bright sunshine, where the bluebells are a pale sky-blue, into the shadows of trees, where the flowers become a deeper, more violet blue.  But their wonderful scent is always the same.

There's even the occasional white bluebell.

And here are bluebells beneath a blue sky.  The birds were yelling all around us - sounding like creaky gates and tin whistles, but nevertheless singing peace into our breasts.  For that hour or so, walking in the sun and bluebell scent, I couldn't have been happier.

Bluebell Looking

I love the colour blue. I think there's no other colour as vibrant in all its tints and shades; and I love blue flowers. Germander speedwell, cornflowers, forget-me-nots, delphiniums, monkshood. And bluebells.
Every year I look forward keenly to the flowering of the bluebells. I watch their rosettes of dark green, strap-like leaves. I watch the stalks appearing. And as soon as I see one flowering in some crack in a wall, I head for the Clent Hills.

The Clent Hills are a National Trust property, north of Birmingham. Every spring, on Walton Hill, the ground under the trees on the hillside turns blue with bluebells. On Clent Hill, the flowers grow on the open hillside, in the sun, and you can look over miles of unbroken blue. Such stretches of bluebells are a sign of ancient, undisturbed woodland. It takes a long, long time for such masses of bluebells to seed and grow.

Walking along these paths I walked through a dense cloud of fragrance: bluebells are wild hyacinths. No wonder folklore says that, if you fall asleep in a bluebell wood, you may go mad, or be transported into another world. They are Elvish, eldritch flowers, according to legend.

They are certainly blue. Sky-blue, dark-blue, purple-blue in the tree shadows. I love them. Next week I'll be here again, and the next week, until they all die. But next year they'll flower again, and I'll be back again, to look at bluebells.