Songlines
In the last of three posts on the creation of his debut pamphlet collection, Down the Heavens, Alun Hughes invites us on a walk to where it began and considers how the land inhabits us with songlines as keys to ecological regeneration and cultural renewal.
I am sitting at my desk, waiting for the light to change. It’s 6.30am now, I’ve been here since 5am. This is how most of my days begin, eking out a couple of hours of my writer’s life before another day of bill paying begins.
When the light changes enough, in an hour or so, I’ll take my Lurcher down to The Heavens for our walk where, with my notebook held in my pocket, I’ll be listening for another few words; taking notes on the edges of a town, of a time, a field, its hedge, its woods and, of course, the water.
But as I walk here now, passing particular places, I also hear lines from the poems in Down the Heavens. Come with us now, the hound and me. I thought that we could take a last walk together, nearing this year’s end, a few weeks before the return of the light and the Solstice celebration fires of regeneration and renewal.
I wrote in my last post about ‘the step’ below the kissing gate by the cemetery. Let’s slow down on our way to the gate, between the allotments and the graves. Here’s the yew tree that sprayed rainwater in a gust of wind onto me as I remembered the light source of my life and returned me to its ever-present moment, its perfect yew tree thusness. So, through the kissing gate we go, we can stop on the step now and let the Lurcher off. He can skip up along the deer paths above us as we take the slip-stone path steeply down, past the thorn scrub, to Lymes Brook. ‘Before climbing to the woods, I stand in the brook. I remember how to begin.’
Let’s walk up across ‘the green-leaved hues of the path-stone’ toward the woods. At the top of the slope, there’s the junction of paths with the old cart track that rises from Stroud and heads toward Bisley. At this crossroads, there is a spray of bramble and ash trees that grow out of the last remains of a small holding that once stood there. Inside, there is a subtle fire site where certain pagans gather at Solstice, Equinox, Beltane and our other festivals of the turning year, to offer prayers for the land and its people.
From here we could go through another kissing gate and follow the old cart track up to the ‘Haven’s house.’ I could show you the limestone trough that appeared as ‘a last mammoth, leaning into an era’s end’ or we could follow the water down ‘The Course to Naming a Brook’ to the water’s falling for ‘the relief of the meadow’s slowing’.
But this morning, we’ll take the track to the side of the gate and wander up into the wood, to the ride leading to the waterfall. Below, amongst the beech trees, there are the last stumps of two pre-industrial weavers’ cottages with the weaving shed attached beside. These were emptied after the families were dragged by the clothiers into their new mills in the valley, ending their subsistence lifestyles forever. As we walk above ‘fire meadow,’ we’ll pass the dead sycamore, still ‘leaning to its landing,’ that instructed me on ‘this timely apocalypse’ and the beauty in the moment of reaching out for water. It dropped another few branches this year which were eagerly burnt on the summer’s fires.
A few more steps on the path and my attention is drawn uphill, into the ash scrub with their died back crowns, to the ‘two rare oaks’ who reminded me of the plight of working men, of forced labour, wage slavery and the painful paradox between the imminence of joy in dreams of liberation and the sorrow in the truth of lifelong servitude.
Forty or fifty metres ahead, along the ride toward the falls, you’ll see a deer path that carried the roebuck who stopped to drink at Haven’s Brook and took me back though the beech wood and time. He led me to Doggerland and our journeys together, following the last ice melt and to a hind waiting at the wood edge for us.
As we arrive at the waterfall, where ‘the human path crosses your stones, scattered and dam strewn,’ let’s end our walk together. Below here is ‘fire meadow,’ with the brook running through it that, in a lowering light, became a ‘a million silvered moth-wings jammed between the banks.’ But here at the falls, please, take a seat with me, on ‘the flat stone…I call the poet’s chair.’ This is where, in the spring of 2019, this listening began. With the growing collective awareness of the climate emergency accelerating, I found myself sitting here asking the water questions and waiting, listening, looking through an eye shaped gap in the tree branches toward the west. This produced an earlier series of work, yet to be completed and initiated the life choices that led to the publication of Down the Heavens and the subsequent production of the Lensmen album somewhere somewhere, made from nine of its poems.
What this listening has revealed to me, concentrated in a few acres as it is, are what might be seen as song lines in the land. There, I’ve said it…THE LAND.
In the current historical pattern of enclosure for private profit, there is scant access to a tiny proportion of our land. But in the spaces where we can be or, indeed, where we choose to ‘trespass,’ we can listen to the land. These few acres, known as The Heavens, laid claim to me and I listened. In that act, the land gifted me line after line, imaginal moments that continue to live within me, sonic and visual imagery that still appear to me at certain places. It has filled me with these memories. Having claimed me, it has inhabited me with these words and pictures, with song lines.
There are many references to forgetting and remembering in Down the Heavens. How much we have forgotten is in plain sight. A simple comparison between us and indigenous people more recently oppressed by this story, whose cultures remain in some way intact, will evidence that. The question, for me, is in the remembering. It is almost impossible to remember a relationship that has become so distant in linear time. But still, all around these islands, fires are lit, the land is honoured and our stories are told. These are the stories of the land and us as co-habitants. That life, for most, was thrown violently to the wind many years ago. We have been scattered and are left trying to remember. Maybe, by listening to the land, the waters, the ocean, the sky, we can begin to hear and relate the songlines of our home. This could be part of a remembering, not necessarily one of looking back but the remembrance of a future we are dreaming together.
Alun Hughes is a poet and singer living in Stroud, Gloucestershire. In 2020, he received a MA Creative Writing with Distinction from Bathspa University. In 2021, he was a digital writer in residence with Dialect at the Cotswold Water Park and won third prize in the Troubadour International Poetry Competition. In 2022, he was shortlisted for the Laurie Lee Prize. His pamphlet collection Down the Heavens, is published by Yew Tree Press and is available from them as well as Stroud Bookshop. Somewhere Somewhere, an album of nine poems from the collection to original soundtracks, made with the band Lensmen, is due for release on December 2nd on the Irregular Patterns label.
Follow Alun on Instagram and Twitter @alunowl
