Review of Terminarchy by Angela France, pub. Nine Arches Press 2021

there’s enough warmth in the air for bare arms, and at home
the heating’s been off for weeks. Sparrow mutters behind me
We’ll pay for this!
 

(“Early Spring”)
 

It is typical of this collection that an innocuous title like “Early Spring” should turn out to be, not some Victorian or Georgian celebration of poetry’s (alleged) favourite season, but a warning about how climate change is disrupting the seasons. Sparrow, putting in his sardonic two penn’orth over the poet’s shoulder, is a constant presence. Smaller and livelier than Hughes’s Crow, he is also sarkier and conveys his unwelcome news with a wry humour, in another poem with an ambiguous title:
 

     Rooks gather, their rusty calls ratcheting
    from the branches and a voice whispers
    at my shoulder Nice place, if you can keep it.
    (“Getting Late”)

It will be clear by now that this collection’s concerns are primarily ecological. Like all the best ecological poetry, it neither preaches nor accentuates the negative; the focus, mostly, is not on “look what we’ve lost” but “look what we have, and dare not risk losing”, which is not only a more productive approach but results in a lot more enjoyment for the reader.  Often this comes from her sharp, humour-leavened observation of the natural world:

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