From “Birdwatching With Your Eyes Closed: An Introduction to Birdsong” Simon Barnes
Silence is rarely pure. You can hear real silence sometimes deep in a cave – when, if you stop talking, the sound of nothing comes as a physical shock. But…
Category: nature writing
Robert MacFarlane’s “Landmarks” and the literature of nature
I should love Robert MacFarlane’s “Landmarks”, but it is proving strangely difficult to get through. Normally I reserve any kind of reviewing judgment on books until I have completely finished…
LINES COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY, ON REVISITING THE BANKS OF THE WYE DURING A TOUR. JULY 13, 1798
Five years have past; five summers, with the length Of five long winters! and again I hear These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs With a soft inland murmur.–Once again Do…
A note on whales and silence from The Brendan Voyage by Tim Severin
“But on the voyage itself none of Brendan’s crew guessed what was about to happen, not even Trondur, who had a great deal of experience of whales and whale-catching. Day after…
Nabokov’s Blues: The Scientific Odyssey of a Literary Genius. Kurt Johnson & Steve Coates. Lancet, 11th March 2000.
I only recently realised that my book review on wolves in Ireland isn’t actually my only “natural history” piece. This is in fact my first piece published in a proper, non-student publication.…
Review of Wolves in Ireland by Kieran Hickey, TLS, April 2012.
Going through my writings, I realise how little deals with something of great personal importance to me; nature and the natural world. Of course, semantic quibbling teaches us that “nature”…
Séamus Sweeney 