Pagan poetry – Ed Boxall

We The Wild Ones is officially published today!

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It’s a collection of poems, stories and art inspired ‘The Wild’.
In the book, ‘Wild’ is wild nature but also the wild inside us- the freedom to think our own thoughts, dream our own dreams and ‘walk wherever wonder leads’.

And….the freedom to publish our own books exactly the way we want them!
I hope it’s a playful, uncompromising book in both form and content- hence the mix of stories, art and poems. There’s also no tedious blurb or quotes on the back- the title poem instead. I want you to be in the wild-otherworld of the book completely on every bit of every page.

It started from the need to re-print my story ‘High in the Old Oak Tree’, which is included, but there’s a lot lot more.

I’ve been spending the Summer at Fests and libraries performing stories and poems from it, planning workshops, and making up creative games based on the book. I’m all set to visit schools over the next school year to perform and run workshops based on the book. I’ve got quite a few lined up but would love more! If you work in a school and would like a visit please get in touch.

The Month of May

‘The Month of May’ is a poem by an unknown poet from the 9th Century. I found it in a brilliant book “The Wise and Foolish Tongue, Celtic Stories and Poems” by Robin Williamson. I highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the myths, poems, and stories of Celtic Britain.

This poem and activity are for adults and older children who would like a really rewarding writing challenge.

Here’s the full poem, with my scribbles:

The Month of May from ‘The Wise and Foolish Tongue’ by Robin Williamson.

The poem makes a day in May in rural Ireland 1100 years ago feel as fresh and alive as this day in May 2020.

I think it’s a great poem for anyone to use as inspiration for writing about nature. It shows how simply describing the world can make a brilliant poem if words are very carefully chosen.

So…let’s do a writing experiment. Try writing a poem that sticks to some rules based on ‘The Month of May’ poem. These are the rules:

Your poem must be about NOW. It must be about your experiences of nature at the moment, in May 2020. It could be about your daily exercise-walk, or nature in your garden or out your window. You can include things you’ve noticed over the past few days but not from long ago or even last year. It’s not about imagining a day in May somewhere else. It’s about your experience of nature in May 2020.
You must NOT have “I saw… or “I feel” or “I think..”etc. The writer desribes what they experience without once saying ‘I’. We don’t see the writer in ‘Month of May’, we see what they see. The writer is a window we look through and see The Month of May.
Describe something new on each line. You’re not writing a whole poem about a bird or a tree or the sea. You’re writing a poem with a lot of images. Each line is a different picture. The main challenge is to make each picture as vivid and alive as you can. Use every syllable to paint the best picture you can. This is what makes ‘The Month of May’ so good. Try and write lines that are as short and brilliantly descriptive as “Hedge green bristle the branching boughs” or “haze upon the brimming lake” or “harp of the trees hums and soothes”
No rhyming, no upper-case letters, and keep punctuation to a minimum.

Give it a go and see what happens!

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