The social decline of the oystercatcher

Sue Vickerman's eerily prophetic poems describe Nature and the old normal before flood and famine, wildfires and too-close war. Scottish landscapes, seabirds and fresh air provide the setting for innocuous pre-pandemic behaviours: beach-combing, bird-watching, bickering. But the breeze blowing through this volume carries a prescient whiff of decay - an uncanny foretelling of what has come to pass. 

The natural world is shifting, changing, not 'normal' at all. Everywhere there are portents: the rotting stomach of the boat dragged from the lake; the disused nests that bring down the tree; the oystercatcher's social decline - it seems even seabirds are in retreat 'from the encroaching edge of the sea'. 

Nowadays all are aware that Nature is the treasure we are losing. These poems from the turn of the millenium are full of foreboding - but who among us did not see the writing on the wall?

This new edition of the second of Sue Vickerman's five poetry volumes has been revised for current times.