Bunting
“the sound of flowing water pulled me towards a dense stand of phragmites growing on the northern margins of the lake” - Writer in Residence Jacqui Stearn considers the potential for rebuilding biodiversity at the lake
Lake 32 at dawn - Jacqui Stearn
I’ve been working with this final poem, another sonnet, since the end of November when I created a mind map with ‘approaching the last sonnet’ in the centre. The mind map built over a week or so, with bunting, lifeline, Code Red Dawn added after an early morning visit to the lake when the sound of flowing water pulled me towards a dense stand of phragmites growing on the northern margins of the lake in the Keynes Country Park, the opposite end to Lake 32.
The mesmerizing sound was the chattering of reed buntings, small birds the size of sparrows that are amongst our year-round resident birds, unlike the nightingales which breed in Southern Britain – though only just – and winter in Southern Africa. The dawn was stunning.
That life cycle difference between the buntings and the nightingales arced me back to my first (as yet unpublished) poem from the Lake 32 residency which was written after the thrill of hearing nightingales sing for my first time. I’d made contact with the thriving group of ornithologists watching over the entire Cotswold Water Park bird population and one of them invited me to meet him in the hour before dusk and led me into an area of nondescript, impenetrable blackthorn scrub through which wove paths to a fishing lake on the opposite side of the Spine Road to Lake 32. We stood still and waited. No nightingales, but a cuckoo sounded, the first I’ve heard in many years. It became a prelude as minutes later the glorious notes of a male nightingale were ascending into the darkening sky, calling down a migrating female to join him, mate and raise a brood.
Southern Britain is the northern edge of the nightingales’ range. They’re clinging on in Sussex and in Highnam Woods, the RSPB reserve near Gloucester – and in the Cotswold Water Park. The reasons for their decline are complicated, climate change amongst them, but the loss of their ragged, scrubby habitat to development, agricultural intensification and thoughtless landscape management are key contributors. There is a real opportunity around Lake 32 to address this habitat loss and support biodiversity alongside places for human play. It was this possibility that inspired this final poem of my residency, Bunting.
My intention at the beginning of this year of residency, was to delve into archival material and work with found words to create poetry. Online delving was possible, but lockdown closed the Gloucestershire Archives and the Corinium Museum. Instead, what arose was a swerve away to work with the sonnet form, something I’d not attempted before.
I did though, sustain my overarching intention to embrace the impacts of the Anthropocene through my writing. This grew month on month as the global impact of climate change became so shockingly evident. Beneath this umbrella, I had decided on a pulse of past, present, and future for my three separate months, making this December a future focus. Of course, COP 26 was writ large in that focus. Whether or not it has succeeded depends on your lens and measure, but for the first time the impossibility of disentangling climate and biodiversity has been fully acknowledged. Bunting attempts to draw attention to this intense relationship right down to the lake’s side.
Jacqui Stearn is the Dialect x Waterland writer in residence throughout April, August and December 2021. Follow her on Twitter @StearnJacqui
Jacqui Stearn
Bunting
Here, bedded in this lake’s ecology
carbon, sequestered, caught in the dark silt.
Reed buntings chirrup possibilities
as sun’s rise lays blood red on the lake’s quilt.
Expand the water’s margins, alders, reeds
willows, flags could thrive, give shelter, food
to a pyramid of life free to breed
a plenitude of species brood on brood.
And, imagine nightingales returning,
singing a mate down into blackthorn scrub
grown to be impenetrable, bringing
to the lakeside joyously voiced love.
Just like the swimmers, life needs this lifeline
of new habitats. Bring out the bunting.
