The Battle for the Trees
When we destroy nature, we destroy ourselves. The Battle of Verdun, France, 1916 took its toll on 300,000 lives and decimated the landscape. An unimaginable tragedy, but the impact of anthropogenic Climate Change, caused by rapacious Capitalism, scales the death-toll up to millions and results in mass extinctions.
Cad Goddeu (Battle for the Trees) is a proto-ecological poem featured in the 14th century Hans Taliesin (The Book of Taliesin). I have created my own poem based upon this. It was featured in a spoken word show, ‘Robin of the Wildwood’, which I co-created with Fire Springs and premiered in a woodland on May 1st. With priceless habitat being destroyed daily it seems more resonant than ever. We must all become defenders of the ‘wildwood’: biodiversity from the back garden to national parks to globally important wildernesses like Antarctica. In Britain the Right to Roam movement is a powerful modern iteration of this – especially in its evoking of folklore in the figures of Esme Boggart and Old Crockern. We need to defend our wild places.
Old Crockern is Rising by Nick Hayes, 2023 https://www.righttoroam.org.uk/
Performing in ‘Robin of the Wildwood’, Rocks East Woodland, near Bath
‘The Battle of the Trees’ is featured in Silver Branch: bardic poems (Awen, 2018). Signed copies available.
