Patrick Osada’s collection The Warfield Poems is a lament for his village in Berkshire that over the last few decades has largely been swallowed up by the “tentacles” of housing development reaching out from a nearby new town. Not so new a town now, of course, but still the homes come. Homes that the country needs, we are told - but not at the cost of nature and wildlife, Osada argues.

This might be seen as just an example of poetic Nimbyism, yet Patrick Osada argues his case persuasively and lyrically. On the back cover of this collection I have already cited admiringly John Clare and Edward Thomas, as voices I can hear traces of here. To those illustrious poets I would add the sometimes jaundiced tone of Philip Larkin, whose 1972 poem ‘Going, Going’ warned that soon “all that remains / For us will be concrete and tyres.”

‘West End, Warfield’ echoes the “head brass” of Edward Thomas in its first line, before setting the scene:

 

     The houses down the lane

     have changed – been much improved,

     extended, modernised

     by couples who have moved

     away from urban sprawl,

     they breathe fresh air,

     have roses round the door,

     but shout, “Keep West End Green!”

     when councillors decide,

     “This village needs more homes –

     The plans’s to urbanise.”

 

‘Green and Pleasant’ of course refers to a famous line in William Blake’s Jerusalem, and is the title of a poem that takes issue with the growth of rape in the countryside – “and from the hills a patchwork glows / an alien crop in England’s heart.”

There’s that Larkin echo in ‘Once It’s Gone, It’s Gone’:

 

     Goodbye to the quiet life of the peaceful country lanes,

     Shoe-horning in more houses, keep this copse dog walking space,

     but land that just grows houses is marked by the curse of Cain …

 

     … Old ways will be forgotten without protest and debate,

     Remember the name while it matters – ancient Saxon place,

     It could become just a sign on a road flanked by big estates.     

 

Ah, the Saxons. Invaders themselves, of course.

In ‘Waiting for the Inevitable (Urbanisation)’ Osada’s anger matches that of John Clare’s protests about enclosures destroying nature and his way of life:

 

     They’ll turn The Cut into a muddy ditch

     with concrete channels built to guide its flow;

     a roundabout, cramped houses will come next:

     from green fields into suburbs in one go.

 

The final couplet of ‘At the Splash’ emphasises Osada’s anguish: “In making space for people and for cars, / another landscape is forever scarred.”

I would not want to give the impression that this collection is simply an extended, well-argued planning objection. There are poems here that highlight Osada’s keen eye in writing about wildlife, albeit with the underlying implication that many if not all these wonders may be lost – deer, larks, crows, rooks, goldfinches, swallows. He celebrates the seasons, and delights in trees and hedgerows – blackthorn, elderflower, willow.

Up here in the wide open spaces of rural north Northumberland it is easy to forget the continuing development pressures on the home counties surrounding London. (We left Surrey almost two years ago, for family reasons). The penultimate poem in this collection, ‘The New Estate’, explains how the view from Osada’s own house has been blocked by new homes. I will quote its three verses in their entirety:

 

     Uninterrupted, our view towards the dawn,

     beyond silhouetted horses near the hedge.

     Soon, across the lightening sky, first birds flew –

     in this pleasant way each breaking day was set.

 

     But builders bought the land, in lifting hedgerows,

     trampled wild flowers – birds and insects flew.

     Gone: cattle from fields, horses and their meadows,

     copse of frightened deer, the foxes’ brambled home.

 

     Next they built high walls, towering above us,

     blocking out the sky, our view of distant hills.

     Countryside no more, landscape changed for ever …

     Stolen, every sun rise, lost, each new day’s dawn.

 

In these poems Patrick Osada refers to the West End area of Warfield, but also Cabbage Hill, a unprepossessing name perhaps, but undeniably precious to him. This crafted collection is a lengthy cry of anger and despair at a rural paradise lost, a depiction of the cost to nature of encroaching upon it to build homes. 

 

Patrick Osada, The Warfield Poems, Amazon, £10

Also available direct from the author for £7 including p&p in the UK. Contact ptrosada@aol.com