Two Lights by James Roberts

 I'd assumed that I was going to a book launch for a book of poetry.  James Roberts is a poet, after all, and the launch was being held at the Poetry Bookshop.

In fact, Two Lights is a book of nature writing, and the extracts James read out over the course of the evening were beautiful.

He also showed a short video (which is also up on YouTube) of scenery around the Begwns, some of it shot from a drone, in gorgeous, crisp black and white photography.  There was a slide show of some of the other birds and animals he mentioned in the book, too, including a wolf - which was not the same wolf as he'd met in Canada.  He'd been hiking with his wife, when a wolf jumped out of the woods, sat on the trail to stare at them, and then disappeared into the woods again.  This is apparently very unusual behaviour for a wolf - so maybe the spirits of the wilderness were trying to tell him something....

Nearer to home, he describes star-gazing on the Begwns above Hay, and links it with the swans on the pond up there.  He also talked about the swifts travelling from Wales down to Africa on their annual migration, and years ago he travelled a similar route through the Sahara and into the Congo, and further south.  Later, when we were chatting, Melanie of the Poetry Bookshop said how pleased she was that he'd mentioned the swifts, because a previous owner of the poetry bookshop had written poems about swifts.

This is also a book about loss - he talks about the curlews on the moorland around Hay, and how there used to be around 60 pairs up there but now there are only 3 or 4 pairs - and he describes the extermination of wolves in Britain in the seventeenth century.  One of the last wolves was killed not that far from Hay.  (In the north west of England, near Cartmel, another Last Wolf was killed - it's a sad story I've known since I went to University nearby at Lancaster).  Not only have we lost the wolves, but we've lost the vast forests they used to roam in - all the way across to the Midlands.  

The area of Canada he visited is about the same size as Wales (but with higher mountains), and still pristine, unspoiled wilderness.  In Wales, the same sort of woodland habitat is restricted to tiny areas, like one of the Brecknock Wildlife Trust reserves (I forget the name - I visited a very long time ago), where you had to inform the Trust if you wanted to visit, in case you needed to be rescued!

I bought the book - I always try to buy books and CDs by people I know (and I've known his wife Julia since we were on the Fairtrade committee together).

Being a man of many talents, James has also illustrated the book with his own artwork.  I'm not sure of the technical terms, but it looks like watercolours done in black ink?  Rather like Jackie Morris's pictures of otters, one of which is sharing the window display with James' book and art.

I'm very much looking forward to reading the book.