I have Helena (Nell) Nelson to thank for this, and for permission to quote from her writing. A while back, I was looking through past issues of The North and came across Nell’s appreciation of the poetry and prose of Anna Adams (1926–2011) in issue no. 47, 2011. Nell’s interest had been piqued by the poet and editor John Killick. Unfortunately, as Nell remarked at the start of her piece, ‘Good poets get lost’, a theme to which the conclusion winningly returned:

Anna Adams is not lost. She is here, waiting to be found where she has always been, between the lines of her poems. The space she creates there is like the Tardis: what first looks small gets bigger as you enter. Once you have been in, you come out changed, remembering, as though for the first time, that true poetry is like nothing else, like nothing else at all.

It was with those words in mind that I bought a copy of Adams’s 1986 Peterloo Poets collection, Trees in Sheep Country. Almost all the poems are nature poems, set in and around Horton in Ribblesdale, in the Pennines in the north-west corner of North Yorkshire, not far from the Lancashire and Cumbria coast and close to Brigflatts, to which Bunting added an extra ‘g’ for his supreme extravaganza of the same name. More importantly, they are wonderful poems, i.e. full of wonders. Take, for example, the first four (of nine) stanzas of ‘Rearing Trees in Sheep Country’:

Sheep are tree-wolves. Even the hare attacks
    in snow, and gnaws the bark far from the ground,
    recording height of drifts, but seldom rings trees round
and doesn’t hunt the rooted flock in packs.

But in late February, belly’s trouble
    drives the sheep wild. Though bulging big with lamb
    they scramble over walls and topple them.
Where one stone falls, soon a wide gate of rubble

welcomes the eager rabble. Our young trees
    are sweet as sugar-sticks with rising sap,
    and tempt the sheep as a self-service shop
tempts children. Rubber lips stretch up and seize

horse-chestnut toffees, tear smooth twigs of beech
    whose curving fingers beckon towards spring;
    grey mouths emulsify mute promising
of intricately folded summer speech.

This, I think, exemplifies Nell’s astute observation that, ‘[Adams] knows how to play, how to pursue a thought through beautiful syntax.’ I especially like the wit in the third stanza; and how all the precision is contained within a framework of a fine, unobtrusive rhyme-scheme and an almost always regular syllable-count. That last clause sounds on the ear as gorgeously as any sweet treat would melt in the mouth.

A poem by Adams was ‘Poem of the Week’ in the Guardian in 2011, here. I will be seeking out more of her publications, rare though they may be.

I like the fact, too, that John Killick passed on his enthusiasm for Adams to Nell, who in turn did so to me. Now I’m doing likewise to you, dear reader.