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The Beech of ChalkThis page contains, and is about the poem I was commissioned to write by Icarus calendars for their 2008 Souvenir edition of the Art of Tress Calendar (ISBN 978-1-905340-78-1.).The' Souvenir calendar size is 240mm x 330mm and wire bound. The poem does not appear in the Square Wall Calendar version. I wrote my poem for a photo of a beech grove, that I chose, which was already set for April. There are notes (which are not included in the calendar) below the poem.
Beech is a hardwood tree that most commonly grows, in England, on chalk hillsides, or as an urban ornamental tree in its copper form. Mast alludes to ships and is also the name of beech seeds, and grazing pigs on the mast was a common right in times past. The right was called pannage. Beech is one of the few hardwoods still grown commercially here, for furniture making in this case. There are lots of allusions to furniture (and others to ships). Beech trees were often pollarded, which meant cutting the trunk higher than cattle and deer could reach. New, uniform sized branches would grow and would be harvested. The beech in leaf has a very deep shadow. It was thought this was why nothing (bar a very few kinds of fungi) grows beneath it. It is now know it is alliopathic,. It drips herbicide that kills the plants below it. Beech roots appear massive as you walk over them but are very shallow, and they are easily uprooted in old age by gales, especially when pollards have not been cut for decades. naves refers to the way a grove of old pollarded beech can look like the inside of a Norman church. If you would like to like to know more about how I wrote the pom see some earlier drafts If you like the poem I wrote for April please consider requesting it on BBC Radio 4's Poetry Please program. It is published by Icarus Art Calendars.
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Web services Roger Beaumont