Poetry among the birches with Robert Macfarlane on Winterwatch
Poetry featured on BBC’s recent Winterwatch nature programme, with nature writer Robert Macfarlane reciting his verses in praise of silver birches, and talking about their beauty and importance.
Macfarlane revealed that “when I was a child, I sometimes wrote on birch barks.” His simple but inspiring poetry includes lines such as “Snow is falling, my silver seeker / Soon the path will be lost to sight / Soon the day will give way to night.”
He described the silver birches as “a writer’s trees”, and quoted WH Auden as saying “the culture is not better than its woods”.
His verses continue: “In the night the birches watch you / with their black, unblinking eyes … the birches still like churches.”
This poetic section of Winterwatch (Series 10, Episode 6) ends with Macfarlane warning: “As we lose nature, so we lose the possibilities of the imagination.”
PHOTOGRAPH: BBC
