Notes from the (Real) North Country
Plight of Common Toads to Reach a Wider Audience Thanks to New Anthology
Last month saw the publication of North Country (Saraband Books), a new anthology of Northern English landscape and nature writing that sees pieces from emerging writers (including me) rubbing shoulders with the likes of contemporary names Mark Cocker, Simon Armitage, Sarah Hall and staples such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, the Brontes and Charles Dickens.
Editor Karen Lloyd, author most recently of Abundance (Bloomsbury), did a great job - and you can read some of her thoughts on the anthology here.
The launch event in Lancaster, with readings from many of the authors, had an appropriately celebratory feel. North Country gives readers the North as it really is -not just pretty lakeland fells or, at the other end of the standard cliche spectrum, coal mines and derelict brownfield sites. It offers up the North as a living, breathing region of real depth and variety, where nature may be depleted, endangered or restored.
My own contribution to the book, ‘Crossings’, is a shortened version of an essay that was longlisted for the Future Places Prize for Environmental Literature earlier this year. It describes the Spring migrations of common toads in a small hamlet in Cheshire, and some of my experiences monitoring that great amphibian wonder on our volunteer toad patrols. You can read it in full in the Future Places digital anthology.
After I read from ‘Crossings’ at the launch, a fellow author told me she felt inspired to join a local toad patrol. I can’t think of a better result than that, and I’m really hoping that toads featuring in this anthology will help their cause by bringing them to a wider audience.
If you feel inspired to find out more about toad patrolling in the UK, national amphibian and reptile charity Froglife has all the info …