Layering Dartmoor
by Helen Boyles
23 poems, 46 pages
Publisher: Palewell Press
Price: $10
ISBN: 978-1-911587842
To order: www.palewellpress.co.uk
Reviewed by Neil Leadbeater One of my earliest memories of Dartmoor was a visit to one of its oldest sessile oak forests known as Wistman’s Wood. Characterised by large lichen-covered boulders and an abundance of mosses, it is one of Britain’s last remaining ancient temperate rainforests containing trees that may be many hundreds of years old. The same sense of history that it impressed upon me is conveyed in this latest collection by writer and educator Helen Boyles. As Co-Chair of the Devon-based Moor Poets, a group designed to promote and develop poetic talent in regular workshops based on and around Dartmoor, which has in collaboration with local artists published the recent, illustrated anthology ‘Unearthing Dartmoor’, Boyles is well-qualified to write about this upland area in southern Devon, South West England.
A clue to the way Boyles approached her subject is to be found in its title. The term ‘layering’ can mean many things in different contexts but, as far as the natural world is concerned, it refers to a technique of plant propagation where the new plant remains at least partially attached to the mother plant while forming new roots and is a process that can occur naturally through modified stem structures. In this collection, Boyles peels back different layers using subject headings such as wetlands and woods, stones, farmsteads, early settlements, etcetera, to reveal the history that lies beneath them. During the course of her research for the book, she consulted with a number of specialists including an ecologist, and an archaeologist for their local knowledge of the area.
The collection opens with a poem about Emsworthy Marsh, a Local Nature Reserve that nestles below Haytor in the eastern part of the Dartmoor National Park. Here are the opening lines:
Mire, marsh: the words open a wet space,
plash, squash in the mesh of consonants.
They sound the need for wellingtons,
protective wet gear,
for the careful placing of feet.
Emsworthy makes its appearance a couple of more times in the collection; one in relation to cuckoos and another in relation to farms. In ‘Trying to capture Emsworthy Cuckoos,’ ‘Artists, poets squint and strive in images / and words to catch the fading in and out / of voice and shape’ of the infamous cuckoos who are sometimes heard but rarely seen. The final reference to Emsworthy occurs in the section headed ‘Farmsteads’ where Boyles conjures out of the ruins imagined mornings in the daily life of a once-working farm. A companion piece relates to the still active Dockwell Farm, ‘moor-grounded, weather-rubbed, / steeped in the sleep and toil / of centuries’ which is situated close to the village of Widecombe-in-the-Moor.
Although not mentioned specifically by name, ‘Rainforest’ must surely be a reference to Wistman’s Wood:
Stunted by the weather’s blade, wind’s breath,
outside our remembering
the oak woods twisted their low canopy
across the heights and combes,
vaulted secret chambers
underneath the sun.
It is thought that the name ‘Wistman’ may be related to the Devonshire dialect word ‘wisht’ which appears several times in this collection, meaning ‘eerie’ or ‘uncanny’. The place is certainly atmospheric.
A completely different atmosphere is described in ‘White Wood, Venford’ where ‘pale-skinned oaks clothe the valley sides surrounding the Venford reservoir.
‘Foggintor’ in the section headed ‘Stones’ relates to the granite Foggintor Quarries (opened in 1800 and closed in 1906) whose stones were used, among other things, to build Dartmoor Prison. The rock in the quarry ‘is stained with alchemic rusts, / the fires of its birth throes / glittering in crystal veins.’
The opening lines of ‘The Silence of the Stones’ echo in part the title of this collection and what it is all about:
You cannot see the depths I sound,
the layering of histories.
They sleep outside your knowing
though you will speculate
…..
your mythologies.
In ‘Another Way’ Boyles pays tribute to Donna Cox, the instigator of the Moor Meadows Project for the restoration, creation and management of wildflower-rich meadows as a habitat for a wide range of flora and fauna across Dartmoor and beyond. The final stanza testifies to the success and importance of this project:
The air is fluttering with passages
of flying things and insect shimmerings.
This is a new birth where we greet again
what we have lost, as memory renewed.
‘Reading the Moor’ and ‘Markmakers’ return, to some extent, to the topic of stones. In the former, they are ‘stones of histories…rocks…written with the hieroglyphs / of climate, weather, human sculpting.’ and in the latter, ‘stacked or solitary, / [they] are the bones of our histories / breaking the swell of land…’
In the section on ‘Working and Worship’, ‘The Tinner’s Lode’ commemorates the tin mining industry on Dartmoor which, ‘belly-rich in minerals’, was thought to have originated in pre-Roman times and continued right through to the 20th century. There is some neat wordplay on the word ‘lode’ / ‘load’ which surfaces in the line ‘Blessed are the heavy-laden…’ Its companion piece, ‘Finch’s Foundry: Sticklepath’ pays homage to the last working water-powered forge in England which is situated near Okehampton. The poem gives us an insight into the community that once lived there before the advent of World War I.
This meticulously researched collection reminds us of the need ‘to give ourselves the time to stop and look,’ to look closely at the wonder of nature’s bounty, to see, maybe for the very first time, ‘the ravelled depth / of lichen forest crusting our picnic spot’ and through this intensity of observation, to gain a deeper understanding of the need to care for our environment.
The book is dedicated to all for whom Dartmoor is a source of inspiration for walking, studying or creativity, to those working to restore and enhance its biodiversity and achieve that difficult but important balance between environmental protection and accessibility.
This review was first published in Littoral Magazine (UK) and is reproduced with kind permission.
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