Six spring 2020 concert dates for this very special performance

“Once Upon a time, words began to vanish from the language of children. They disappeared so quietly that at first almost no one noticed – fading away like water on a stone. The words were those that children used to name the natural world around them: acorn, adder, bluebell, bramble, conker – gone! Fern, heather, kingfisher, otter, raven, willow, wren…all of them gone! The words were becoming lost: no longer vivid in children’s voices, no longer alive in their stories.”

This is the intriguing introduction to The Lost Words: A Spell Book by writer Robert Macfarlane and artist Jackie Morris. Described by the Guardian as a ‘cultural phenomenon’ this book holds “spells of many kinds that might just, by the old strong magic of being spoken aloud, unfold dreams and songs, and summon lost words back into the mouth and the mind’s eye”.

The book began as a response to the removal of everyday nature words from a widely used children’s dictionary, but then grew to become a much broader protest at the loss of the natural world around us, as well as a celebration of the creatures and plants with which we share our lives, in all their characterful glory.

It is a large hardback book – over A4 in size, and the gold lettering and eye catching ’charm’ of Goldfinches on the front cover give a hint of the treasures that lie within. Each lost word is conjured back to importance through Robert’s insightful and compelling spells. They are called ‘spells’ rather than poems as they are designed to be spoken (or sung!) out loud in order to summon back these words and creatures into our hearts. Robert explains: "We’ve got more than 50% of species in decline. And names, good names, well used can help us see and they help us care. We find it hard to love what we cannot give a name to. And what we do not love we will not save.”

Robert’s nature spells resonate through Jackie’s artwork and vice versa so that together word and art begin to vividly conjure up precious moments from the natural world. It is a book to be aesthetically savoured, spoken aloud and taken to the heart. The spells revel in nature’s wildness, ruthlessness, beauty, rhythms, wonder and even humour; yet we are repeatedly reminded of nature’s vulnerability through double pages dedicated to imagining nature’s absence from our world.

The Lost Words: Spell Songs is a musical companion piece to The Lost Words book, where musicians unfold the “dreams and songs” living within the pages of the book. The piece brings together eight remarkable musicians, whose music already engages deeply with landscape and nature, to respond to the creatures, art and language of The Lost Words. Spell Songs allowed these acclaimed and diverse musicians to weave together elements of British folk music, Senegalese folk traditions, experimental and classical music, and create an inspiring new body of work.

The eight musicians are Karine Polwart, Julie Fowlis, Seckou Keita, Kris Drever, Kerry Andrew, Rachel Newton, Beth Porter and Jim Molyneux.

www.thelostwords.org