Shaping Landscape
Sustainable Management at Cors Caron
From Planet 245
by Mary-Ann Constantine
Mary-Ann Constantine interviews farmer and conservationist Owen Williams about a new project to enhance Ceredigion wetland ecology, and the ethics of biodiversity and shooting. Drawing on the poetry of John Clare and Isgarn she reflects more widely on shaping landscape and environmental crisis.
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Emmonsails Heath in Winter
I love to see the old heaths withered brake
Mingle its crimpled leaves with furze and ling
While the old heron from the lonely lake
Starts slow and flaps his melancholly wing
And oddling crow in idle motion swing
On the half-rotten ash trees topmost twig
Beside whose trunk the gipsey makes his bed
Up flies the bouncing woodcock from the brig
Where a black quagmire quakes beneath the tread
The field fare chatter in the whistling thorn
And for the awe round fields and closen rove
And coy bumbarrels twenty in a drove
Flit down the hedge rows in the frozen plain
And hang on little twigs and start again
John Clare (1793-1864)
About the author
Mary-Ann Constantine’s academic work explores the cultural history of Romantic-era Wales. She has also published two collections of short stories and a novel (Star-Shot, 2015).
