This poem-soundscape was a commission for Yorkshire Peat Partnership's exhbition "Give peat a chance" which was shown at the Dales Countryside Museum, Settle Folly, and Cliffe Castle.

The inspiration for this piece began when talking with visual artist Ann Rutherford about the peat bog; the sundews looking almost otherworldly, and the mosses creating intricate mosaics across the landscape. We went on a walk together up on the tops and began unearthing ideas about the stories the peat holds, how the intricate ecosystem works to support such vital carbon capture. We talked about how desolate and vast they appear, but in reality, when healthy and restored, have such complex and beautiful plants supporting an incredibly biodiverse habitat. Ann’s artwork developed this idea, showcasing the moss and the sundew zoomed in and given centre stage.
I haven’t been up to Fleet Moss since the filming of the Atlas music video in April 2021. I wanted to go up there again, to see the difference a year on, and record some natural sounds to include in my composition. With Jenny Sharman as my guide, I spent a few hours recording skylarks, lapwings, redshanks and even bees! I knew this would form the backbone of my piece, and I wanted to include the natural sounds and bird song as not only an atmospheric element but a sonically inspirational one as well.
Back at home in the studio, I recorded various improvised cello parts, attempting to mimmick the bird song and envisage the moors, with the aim to create a transportive soundscape for the listener.
I began researching skylarks, because their song was the most prevalent, and discovered that as they rise into the air, their song can include more than 300 syllables, each bird slightly different to the next. They rise and hover as high as 1000ft, before a plunging descent to the ground. Like many ground nesting birds, the population of skylarks has plummeted.
But on Fleet Moss it felt like they were flourishing, reclaiming, singing the song of a landscape reborn. Such a small bird with such an infinite language, paired with the deep, dark layers of thousands of years’ worth of peat (though extensively damaged) below, spoke strongly to me of the resilience and fragility of this landscape, and formed the basis of the poem I wrote. I also wanted to reflect Ann’s close-up drawings of the mosses, bog cotton and sundew in the language I used. I wanted the music and the poetry to interweave like the birdsong, to meander and circle back to where it started, but not quite the same. Echoing this was the restoration of the peat bog at Fleet Moss, returning slowly back to how it should be, the endless cycle of nature and time carrying on.