On Having a Heart….From ‘Emergence’ Magazine….From ‘Wild Justice’…..
by Bernie Bell - 07:57 on 18 June 2024
On Having a Heart….
Our American chum is visiting Scotland – he’s in Glasgow now and was inspired by a pickled heart in the Hunterian Museum….
Why I Write Poetry
Imagine the unnamed adult male
whose body was buried without a heart.
Did he die sudden and young,
long before the age of EKGs,
leaving a black-veiled widow
who donated his body to the university?
Or was it later exhumed
by the light of a waning moon
and sold to sallow professors
for a few cases of gin?
The rest of him rests somewhere
though by now only bones remain,
tombstone worn smooth by Scottish rain.
His heart is pickled and on display
in a museum centuries after death.
May my heart be as lucky.
https://bartbarkerpoet.com/2024/06/15/why-i-write-poetry/
I did something weird when copying his poem over to post here, and lost the ‘returns’. So I wrote down the last word of each line, to be able to put the returns in.
It became a kind-of poem-thing itself – maybe?
Heart
Uni.
Gin
Rain
Death
Lucky.
Bartholomew is pleased enough with the weather we’re having – he’s left temperatures of 30 degrees behind him in North Carolina!
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From ‘Emergence’ Magazine…..
Directed by Adam Loften and Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee
“To think in the million years plus that humans have been evolving, in my lifetime, I might hear the last nightingale—that’s incomprehensible.”
With the arrival of summer, we bring you the first film in our new four-part Shifting Landscapes documentary film series, directed by Emmy- and Peabody-nominated filmmakers Adam Loften and Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee, exploring the alchemical power of art and story to orient us amid the darkness of our time. After having its world premiere last year at our Shifting Landscapes exhibition in London and its US premiere last month at Mountainfilm Telluride, The Nightingale’s Song is now screening exclusively on Emergence. In this film, award-winning British folk singer Sam Lee opens us to an experience of beauty and wonder through singing with the nightingale.
Lighting up the forests of southern England at night every spring for thousands of years, the voices of nightingales have inspired generations of writers, artists, and musicians. But as climate change and nature depletion harm their habitats, nightingales may disappear from the UK within the next fifty years. What sacred relationship would be severed if we could no longer hear and respond to their call? Each night during the nightingales’ mating season, Sam heads into the forest to entwine his song—drawn from an ancient lineage of traditional folk music—with that of the nightingale. Offering a practice of devotion and an act of rebellion for a more-than-human being that may soon be lost from this land, he invites people to connect with voices beyond our own that await should we only listen.
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From ‘Wild Justice’….
“Good morning!
We told you recently we’d be sharing some General Election opinion pieces from various voices in the conservation and environmental sector.
We’ve asked a wide range of people to scrutinise different parties’ manifestos – both ones in Westminster and those in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – looking at them from an environmental and nature-based perspective.
Today we publish the first few of these pieces, from the likes of Telegraph Columnist Rosie Pearson, young nature campaigner Indy Kiemel Greene, and author and ecologist Derek Gow, as well as Wild Justice’s own Mark Avery.
All published accounts do not necessarily reflect the views of Wild Justice - we are aiming for variety (and quite honestly, we couldn't have predicted what many of these authors have written). We didn't tell people what to write and we haven't edited what they wrote (except to squeeze things into a common format, to correct minor grammatical and spelling errors and typos).
We’re still waiting on quite a few parties’ manifestos to be published (see current list below), and so will be highlighting policies from them as they emerge, along with our guest bloggers.
To read the pieces published so far, find an up-to-date index of blogs here. You can read each contribution specifically by clicking on the links below:
General Election opinion pieces:
Guest election blog - Conservatives by Rosie Pearson
Guest election blog - Labour by Indy Kiemel Greene
Guest election blog - Reform by Derek Gow
Guest election blog - Labour by Mark Avery
Guest election blog - Green Party by Rosie Pearson
Guest election blog - Lib Dems by Rosie Pearson
If you think you could write a similar review of the environmental content any of the political parties' manifestos, and one which sticks to the format of these reviews, then have a go and we'll consider it. Send any potential texts to admin@wildjustice.org.uk and we will look at them. We'll need an image of yourself if we decide to publish your piece. A small payment will be made for published pieces.
Currently published manifestos from main political parties:
Conservative Party manifesto - click here
Green Party of England and Wales manifesto - click here
Labour Party manifesto - click here
Liberal Democrat Party Manifesto - click here
Reform Party manifesto - click here
Scotland:
SNP – Not yet published
Scottish Labour – click here
Scottish Greens – Not yet published
Scottish Conservatives – Not yet published
Scottish Lib Dems – Not yet published
Alba – click here
Wales:
Plaid Cymru – click here
Welsh Labour – click here
Welsh Conservatives – Not yet published
Northern Ireland:
Sinn Fein – Not yet published
Green Party NI – click here
DUP – Not yet published
SDLP – Not yet published
Alliance – Not yet published
UUP – Not yet published
TUV – Not yet published
Watch this space – more pieces will be coming soon!
Thank you
Wild Justice (Directors: Mark Avery, Chris Packham and Ruth Tingay).”
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