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.
Gwiwer Goch by Leaf Pettit
In the hush of the forest
a language is slowly returning
in kaas and kuks and chit, chit, chits,
uttering tales and taunts and titbits.
Chatterbox, prattler, telltale,
tufted ears listen and learn,
teeth tappety-tapping at nuts and seeds
like morse code reverberating
from root to tree top.
Then the scratch and click of claws
on rough bark as they scurry and scamper
carrying stories and secrets
of animal, fungi and tree.
Spelling out mysteries in the rings
run, circling and circling,
a streak of amber disappearing
and reappearing through the mists of Annwn;
spiralling messages and wisdom
between earth and spirit.
In Norse mythology, the red squirrel Ratatoskr is a significant figure, known for its role as a messenger and gossip-monger in the World Tree Yggdrasil.
In Irish mythology, Queen Medb carries red squirrels on her shoulders; believed to be messengers conveying information between the earthly and supernatural spheres. Annwn is the Welsh underworld.
