Tales From The Woods is a thrilling, impassioned hymn of praise to trees and the English countryside from one of our best-loved poets.
Felix Dennis, one of Britain’s best loved poets, assumes the mantle of the Green Man as he takes readers on a journey into the wildwood, across hill and dale, from farm to forest, river bank to rushy mere, poacher’s copse to bluebell wood— and on a journey back in time, ‘when a squirrel could swing from Bight to Wight’ before ‘the Weald gave way to plough’.
His eye misses nothing — from the quality of light in early morning to the joyous exuberance of young birds learning to fly; from a hornbeam’s delicate shades of green in spring to the ‘kamikaze’ obduracy of ornamental maples refusing to shed their leaves in November gales. Here is ‘Mrs. Fox’ making a home for her cubs in an abandoned cellar; a spider attacking a sea-green dragonfly caught in its web; an apple tree that has learned to ‘walk’; and the terrible curse of a veteran tree marked for felling.
Beautifully illustrated by Bill Sanderson throughout, Tales From The Woods will be greeted with delight by all lovers of trees and the countryside — and especially by those who have already fallen under the spell of a poet described by one eminent critic and author as ‘a 21st-century Kipling’.
Felix Dennis is a publisher, poet and planter of trees. His five previous books of poetry have made him one of Britain’s best-loved poets and his poetry has been performed by The Royal Shakespeare Company on both sides of the Atlantic. His hugely popular poetry tours are the subject of a forthcoming documentary, Full House. He lives in England, the USA and on the Caribbean island of Mustique.