The More Than Human Perspective in Contemporary Poetry: A Poem and Interview from Angela France

Interview by Zoë Brigley

Welcome back to our series on writing the “More Than Human”. We offer a set of interviews with poets and writers on how they approach writing about the environment. The more-than-human is a phrase that seeks to side-step traditional nature-culture dualisms and draw attention to the unity of all life as a kind of shared commonwealth existing on a fragile planet. It also reminds us humans that there is more to life, that there is more world, than the human. It relocates us in relation to the mystery.

This week we meet Angela France who has poems published in leading journals and anthologies. Her fifth collection, Terminarchy, came out July 2021 with Nine Arches Press. Angela teaches at the University of Gloucestershire and in various community settings. She runs a reading series in Cheltenham, ‘Buzzwords’.

---

Hedge

---

Zoë Brigley:  Reading this poem, I was put in mind, strangely enough, of the Enclosure Acts, which transformed much of the British landscape from open fields and common land into privately owned spaces marked by hedges and boundaries. It’s interesting how hedges have become such a familiar and seemingly natural part of the landscape. I wondered what initially inspired you to write about the humble hedge?

Angela France: Yes, hedges inevitably lead to the enclosures and the deprivation and distress caused by them but some hedges are even older. The Romans were confounded by ‘woven hedges’ in Belgium which they couldn’t break through. Did you know you can roughly date a hedge by how many species are in 30 yards? About 100 years for each species. I have always liked hedges, especially rural rather than garden hedges. There is nothing better than walking past a hedge and hearing a flock of sparrows chattering. Hedge-laying, like dry stone walling, is a rural skill which is dying out but a well-laid hedge is a thing of beauty. And hedges are the only places one can still see the English Elm, once such a feature of our landscape, until they get big enough to get hit by disease.

Zoë: Looking at the form of the poem, it feels a little sonnet-like to me, despite being only thirteen lines long. There also seems to be a kind of volta towards the end, particularly in the penultimate line, where the hedge appears to rebel against its former purpose and surrender itself to the wilderness. Could you talk us through how the poem arrived at this form and structure?

Angela: I thought, at first,it was going to be a sonnet and thought the poem wanted to be a sonnet. I don’t usually decide on a form before I start writing; I usually find that the poem decides the form (sometimes against my wishes, I really don’t like it when a poem wants to be a villanelle!). Somehow, this one started sonnet-ish and then broke free, perhaps to reflect the hedge breaking free from being well-laid into a straggle of trees.

Zoë: There is certainly a sense of joy in the poem, in the transformation of a once carefully managed hedge into something wilder and less constrained. I wondered whether the poem is, in part, inviting us to think about nature less in terms of pruning, control, and cultivation, and more in terms of allowing it to exist beyond human intervention and expectations. Do you think you engage with this idea in your writing?

Angela: Oh, definitely! I always have a sense of delight when I see nature breaking through such as when I see buddleia growing through concrete on an abandoned site. I went to the Eden Project some years ago and found the regimented layout quite depressing until I found a dandelion squeezing between paving slabs. Or recently, walking in coppiced woods, how the trimmed branches, laying on the ground, were still sprouting leaves; they felt the urgency of spring which will not be denied. Here, though I said above what a lovely thing a well-laid hedge can be, I am still so pleased that the trees broke free of it. Years ago, I lived on a place with some land and employed a traditional hedge-layer to sort out a neglected hedge. I was surprised how brutal the process seemed as thick stems were chopped almost through to make the bent pleachers. So yes, there is joy in seeing the trees growing past that constriction. Also, a lot of work has been done on that lane, to widen footpaths and roadway as it leads to a new school. I am so very happy they have been left as they are.

Zoë: Is there anything else you would like to tell us about this poem?

Angela: I am so pleased the poem has found the right home, so thank you.