Roz Brady joined the DPA conservation volunteers for a recent workday at Pudsham Meadows and used her time to sink into the landscape and notice the abundance of life present in the meadow. Roz is an Environmental Composer, musician, author and poet who delights in composing outside, immersing herself in the sights and sounds of nature and allowing these elements to influence her work. Here’s what she shared with us after her visit:
Sylvia’s Field Pudsham Meadows, Sunday 6th April. Sunny, cold east wind.
Although I cannot see it the willow warbler and chaffinch know. The willow-warbler plays in the coming season, the old folk singers of the hedge, where wind transforms the twigs to trees and tender willow leaves. The alder, the willow and the birch along the hedge all follow after. Young and small the old withered ash, once tall. There goes the pied woodpecker to its home among the birch trees, following its mate, and the willow warbler singing all the time with the chiff-chaff, that merry bringer of Spring. The woodpecker swoops low, turns her head to see what I am. The Scabious just shows her leaves, the marsh grass quills of gold doodle on the wind. The Small Copper green larvae snuggle deep into their silk nooks in sheep’s sorrel leaf and shiver. Caterpillars of Common Blue huddle down in the litter of leaves beneath the Trefoil.
Today I know all life is nascent and throw my imagination into the task of understanding and picturing life welling up from the earth. My first swallow swoops low over the gold ricks of sedge-the harvest of last summer’s wind and rain, shining tuft on tuft, flaming across the meadow, each a crucible – warming life within. I move across- a giant in the field in a haze of golden sedge that lulls the swallow from the south who swoops low taking account of all her territories, how far the season has advanced, how fine her world is, how good to be alive collecting insects with beak and eye. One by one jewels unearth like a Celtic hoard of raised emerald enamel, scarlet, stippled, interlocking triple spirals, in the hasps, the twisted gold torcs of the sedge. Ploughed by mouldy warps and worms below – the upwards thrust of life into the sun. The bumble bees, the birds, Warbler and Swallow-all know the meadow and the feast to come. Each keeps the world in balance. Each preserves this beauty, performs its duty.
11.15: Willow-warbler swoops before me beneath the willow where I am perched, then sings, his olive eye barred. Three or four males hotly contest the ground. Earliest arrivals sing loudest. The last arrivals over last week sing for their supper. Poetic battles rage around me. The news is it’s been a week for long-distance travel, for gentle western tail-winds, for ocean-going breezes. The breezes pop buds – they burst on every tree, oak, sloe, silver birch and green willow. Each busted leaf reveals a fest of moth grub or egg, crystalid and pupa. This is our place, where we feel safe. These the halls, our willow walls the warblers sing in the willow wood stretching westwards by the meadow.
11.21: First naive bumble bee queen rises buzzing the goat willow but disappointed to find male catkin closed hurries away to richer pasture. Female willow flowers have opened in the northern corner. A crack willow catkin flames out, censing the air, sherbet lemon dust between my fingers, creak of a moorhen or grebe in meadow edge. Or the creak of the gate- latch caught by the swell of the breeze? The chiff-chaff increases its enthusiasm, the short phrases of the willow-warbler, that chuckle merrying the hedge. Each tree puts out its bunting of leaf and blossom fast now as the sun creates ease and chlorophyll. The trees are electric! Each electron and blossom blazing! Singing! Creating shapes, auxins pattering the air, restoring the familiar world of Spring. I burst into a folk song, The Lark in the Morning.
11.33: Magpies squawk, alarmed at electric lycra of bicyclists cycling up the lane, I collect crimson kit-kat wrapper moored on the verge. Blackbirds; their warm contraltos, and I know I am in Springtime in England.
11.52: Peacock butterfly swoops mid-meadow on a single dandelion flower, sips then flits west to Widecombe. Two willow-warblers chant canticles, confirm creed and territory, health and fitness for the task that lies ahead; Life! To Live! and set the brood for this season’s nestlings. Greater Butterfly Orchid, Southern Marsh Orchid, Heath Spotted, Meadow Grass-hopper, Eyebright, Yellow Rattle, Knapweed, Self-heal, Devil’s Bit Scabious, Bird’s Foot Trefoil, Common Blue butterfly, Meadow Brown, Small Copper, Large Skipper, Twayblade. I see, feel, touch them with my unseen seventh sense.
Roz Brady
Image: Roz Brady
At the moment Roz is enjoying her Sunday mornings writing in fields and meadows at Pudsham. She is very grateful to DPA to be able to write in such a beautiful place. Roz has been composing outdoors since she was child growing up in the bush in Australia and in the woods of the Sussex Weald. Written in and responding to wild landscapes her prose and poetry she also writes songs with those seeking to save natural systems, such as John Aitchison, Wildlife Filmmaker on Planet Earth series and conservationist working on Argyll Coast, a Mission Blue Hope Spot.
Rosalind trained at Dartington College of Arts where she gained a 2:1 in Theatre Arts. She has had an interest in deep ecology for the last 30 years.
Her first illustrated book of poetry, Next To Me A Robin written in woods on Dartington Estate, was launched at Great Hall Dartington. She is just finishing its sequel and a new children’s book. Her first album was produced by Head (PJ Harvey, Yoko Ono).
Her latest show combines storytelling and music: Making it Home to Nature is the story of Roz’s love of the ecology of a small, private valley in Dartmoor where she walked and wrote for several years with the permission of the landowners and her efforts to preserve its wildness and beauty against destruction. The show combines the songs she wrote in the ancient woods and meadows of the wild valley.
Copyright Rosalind Brady 2025