Rustling in the leaves
Through dappled sunlight, a shower of falling leaves, and with colours of autumn all around you, you can now listen to poetry and prose inspired by trees in parks and public gardens while you stroll through Bath’s Sydney Gardens.
Bath & North East Somerset Council are celebrating trees in parks and public gardens with a fun-packed Tree Weekender (27 & 28 November), for which the work of 12 authors has been selected as a shortlist in the Sydney Gardens writing competition, and with the help of undergraduates in Participatory Media at Bath Spa University, their work has been made into a podcast and geo-located as audio pieces.
Selected from more than 80 submissions by four volunteer judges: Dr Samantha Walton and Charlotte Smith for poetry and NG Bristow and Simon Wheeler for prose, the authors read their work live at the Tree Weekender online Celebratory Finale on Sunday 28 November.
Rosaleen Lynch (Winner Prose category) – The Acorns of Bartlett Park
Abbie Canning – A moment of quiet contemplation
Hetty Mosforth – Dylan’s Walk
Finola Scott (Runner-up Poetry category) – Local Hero
Karen Waldron – The Fall of the Acacia
Maria Giles (Winner Poetry category) – Desiderium
E.E. Rhodes (Runner-up Prose category) – The Dryad
James Randall (Winner Bath resident prose category) – This Tree Dreams (for Sydney G.)
Rebecca Carter – The Hopi
Nora Nadjarian – To the eucalypts which kept me sane in 2020
Daniel Harwood – Immigrants
Kate Meyer-Currey – In plane site: parking tickets
As part of their prize, shortlists attended a special Nature Writer’s Circle hosted by Dr Samantha Walton at which topics suggested by the authors were discussed, including how to write about climate change and what is the role of nature writers in combating the climate catastrophe. The shortlisted authors read their work in the company of Bristol City poet Caleb Parkin at a Celebratory Finale, at which the winners and runners up in the writing competition were announced.
Ian Critchley – a long listed author was the Runner-up Bath resident prose category for his story: Henrietta’s Limes