Poetic licence to capture the beauty of Wharfedale landscapes

On a blowy, miserable day the view north across lower Wharfedale from the moors still managed to present a picture of bleak beauty which most cameras would fail to capture.
Colin Speakman.  Picture by Bruce Rollinson.Colin Speakman.  Picture by Bruce Rollinson.
Colin Speakman. Picture by Bruce Rollinson.

A poet, though, could paint the scene with just a line of words.

“Deep and raw as winter gale over Barks Crag,” said Colin Speakman, reciting from a poem he wrote about a man who lived there in the 19th century. Job Senior was a recluse who occupied a desolate ruin at which, each Sunday, a crowd gathered to hear what he called his “Blast” - raucous songs delivered from his bed of dried bracken and heather.

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In Colin’s poem The Hermit of Rombalds Moor, he wrote: “See behind the cluster of trees below, in the gill through which Coldstone Beck runs, where road’s tarmac bends; this was the place where Job Senior, Hermit of the Moor, dwelt in a hovel of stones, turf and ling.”

It is one of six poems composed for a new collection inspired by the landscape around his home in Burley-in-Wharfedale. Landscapes have been a focal point of poetry from the very first known verse The Epic of Gilgamesh circa 2100 BC to the work of Keats and Wordsworth.

More recently, Simon Armitage wrote poems set in the Pennine watershed, which were carved onto large stones and placed in remote locations to form a poetry trail across West Yorkshire.

Colin’s poems trace the walk we did around the village on that cold and wet winter’s day. Each of six viewpoints is described in verse with reference to notable past residents, like the poet and essayist Thomas Maude (1718-1798) and highly regarded author of walking guides A. J. Brown (1895-1969).

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The first point on the route is a building in Grange Park called the Roundhouse, remnant of a grand Victorian conservatory. “Once filled with sweet scent of orchid or sour tang of fern, it now displays village worthies and urns for tea,” wrote Colin.

Higher up, in fields above the village, Colin evokes a particular viewpoint on the Dales Way, which he himself devised in the 1960s: “...a journey inspired by a vision, by the long, green, stone-wall-inscribed Dales, which, from the moor top above, unfold as far as a walker’s eye can see.”

The highest moorland point celebrated in verse is an airy farmstead, York View, to which many writers have climbed and attempted to describe: “All struggled for words, rhythm, rhyme to capture what their eyes, now blank, then could see, what, for a brief, precious time, is ours alone.”

To help readers appreciate the views each one is accompanied by a photograph taken by his son Dorian. And on this occasion poet and camera complement each other.

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“After seeing Dorian’s photographs, the poems were tweaked to convene more accurately the scenes they depicted,” Colin admits.

Poets’ Walk, a new collection of poems by Colin and Dorian Speakman is on sale now at Burley Library, at other local outlets and is available online from www.gritstone.coop priced £5.