The Clocaenog Red Squirrel Trust has collaborated with eco-poet Diana Sanders to highlight the challenges facing Clocaenog’s endangered red squirrels through poetry. Eco-poetry blends creative expression with environmental activism, offering a powerful way to engage people with issues such as habitat loss, noise pollution, disease from grey squirrels, and the wider vulnerability of this rare Welsh species. Through these poems, Caro Collingwood (Red Squirrel Ranger) and Diana hope to inspire greater awareness and support for red squirrel conservation.
Each week we’ll be featuring one of the poems written in Diana’s workshop.
A Flash of Red
by Annelise Venkat
Black eyes alert
always moving—
are the shimmering beads
on a flapper dress.
Soft nose twitching
this way and that—
the perfectly folded
silk of a saree.
Long ears shock—
quivering gently,
a double mohawk
catching whispers.
Elegant paws—
pianist’s fingers,
strong and enduring,
fine and precise.
A tail—
to nest in
long and soft,
balancing valiant leaps,
timing the sway,
flashing red between the leaves.
