STEWART CARSWELL

Hello again, poetry fans. This post brings my last feature of the year with an amazing gift of eco-poetry by widely published poet, Stewart Carswell. In the two poems below, we get a flavor of the current season, and then a glimpse of spring with a bit of a satirical twist. I do hope you enjoy your holiday season, and may we all be mindful of our mother earth as we turn the calendar over for the new year (perhaps, add an environmentally-conscious New Year's Resolution to your list!?).  Stewart, thanks so much for allowing me to share your fine work!

​Tradition and the Testament

Tradition: from traditio a handing down


Under the precise conditions for a primeval forest
to fossilise the fuel for a revolution,

the buried and blackened boughs
subjected to millions of years of compression

are dug out from the freemines of the Forest
with pick and axe or—prehistorically—antler,
by tradition more than livelihood now,
a handful of sacks of coal from a handful of mines

and this winter’s delivery spits its heat
on Christmas Eve into the living room
we curl inside, a family around the fire

the way that fungus clusters around the trunk
of a veteran beech that decays its dormant nutrients
back to the forest after death,

the way that CO2 lingers in the atmosphere
long after the fire has burned down for the night,

and with the embers getting low I hand you, my child,
a lump of coal and you place it
upon the mantelpiece to gather dust.

Arrival of Spring

The first one of the season,
warmed by the weekend sun,

emerges from the cobwebs of hibernation.
And slowly, rhythmically, it starts up
with that familiar sound, those familiar notes
not heard for months, and we’re in spring.

The neighbour’s lawnmower
is out and working and cutting down
those quiet early hours
that are gifted so rarely,
to be outside with a notebook
open like an eggshell

but the lawnmower continues scalping the lawn
into millimetres of green, mechanically truncating
the lifespan of bees, and across the road
another starts up, a third croaks into life,
another, another, and soon the whole neighbourhood
thrums with the triumphant arrival of spring.

Stewart Carswell grew up in the Forest of Dean and currently lives in Cambridgeshire, where he organises the Fen Speak open mic night. He studied Physics at Southampton University, and has a PhD from the University of Bristol. His poems have recently been widely published, including in Under the Radar, Envoi, Finished Creatures, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Lighthouse, The Storms Journal, and The Fenland Reed. He has performed poems at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival, Poetry in Aldeburgh Festival, Gloucester Poetry Festival, The Troubadour, and at various outdoor locations in the Forest of Dean and Bristol. His pamphlet "Knots and branches" was published in 2016, and his debut collection is "Earthworks" (Indigo Dreams, 2021). Find out more at: https://stewartcarswell.co.uk/

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