Unauthorised Use

This is a very short post, mainly for the purpose of introducing a very short film I have just made for a poem recently written, called Unauthorised Use.

The poem is short, and fairly straightforward I think, so there is no need for me to speak about it at all, except to tell you when and where it will appear, so I’ll do that in a moment.

Before giving you the publishing information, however, I simply want to recount that I have just spent 100 minutes (no special significance in the number – it just worked out that way) in my back garden. Though I was ostensibly doing some rough weeding and digging, I spent some of the time attempting to commune with nature in the form of one bird initially, then that bird and its mate. 

They were a pair of robins as it happens. Each individually, then as a pair, came fairly close to me. Cautious, but apparently confident I meant them no harm. When I whistled, attempting to imitate their song, they cocked heads to one side, listening but unimpressed. Their focus was more upon the earthworms my digging had uncovered but they showed me friendliness at the level of casual acquaintance before leaving.

I was reminded of my dad whistling to starlings when, as children, he took us on long walks. His whistle, as I recall, was much more musical than mine.

Anyway, all of that is relevant only to the extent that Unauthorised Use relates, at its simplest level, to the perception of birdsong by humans. It will appear in a massive poetry anthology called Summer Anywhere due to be launched, appropriately, in the summer. However, it can be pre-ordered now from hybriddreich.co.uk. (Click on ‘LATEST BOOKS HERE’.)

The film poem for Unauthorised Use is available on You Tube at this link: