📖 Book Review ~Ten Poems about Cows from Candlestick Press

Candlestick Press

Summer 2024

My thanks to the publisher for my copy of this pamphlet

Black and white, brown, smooth-coated or shaggy (with horns), cows are so familiar in our rural landscapes that we often forget to notice them. These poems redress that, paying close and loving attention to the lives of cows – their private joys and public duties – while celebrating the fact of their undeniable cow-ness.

We find cows grazing, being born, being milked, being drawn by a child – not to mention the eminently recitable cow poem that many of us will remember from school days:

“The friendly cow, all red and white,

I love with all my heart:

She gives me cream with all her might,

To eat with apple-tart.”

from ‘The Cow’ by Robert Louis Stevenson

Even if most of us wouldn’t want to become a cow in the way that Selima Hill does, we can all enjoy being taken by poetry into their contented, munching world.

The selection is edited by poet Hilary Menos who used to run a herd of 40 pedigree Red Ruby Devon cattle.

Poems by Hayden Carruth, Jim Carruth, Gillian Clarke, Edmund Vance Cooke, Ruth Dallas, Tjawangwa Dema, Selima Hill, Hilary Menos, Evan Gill Smith and Robert Louis Stevenson.

Cover illustration by Deirdre Dunne.

Donation to Compassion in World Farming

My Review..

There's something gently reassuring about a field of cows, we should consider more the slow pace of their lives and the consistency of their presence in our fields. Dotted around our countryside we take these gentle creatures for granted, but we are always grateful for their milk on our cereals in the morning! When my children were small we spent summer holidays on a Wiltshire farm which ran a herd of Charolais, they were a little daunting close up so we always respected their space and observed them from a distance. We loved seeing them, especially the calves, which my children called the baby white ones.

The Cow Speaks to the Child by Evan Gill Smith

'There's no me without you

says the cow in the sunlight

being looked at, being drawn,

by the child with crayons..'

The spiritual connection of cows is expressed in this poem:

 Wena, kgomo / You, Cow by Tjawangwa Dema 

-Setswana Riddle

' wet-nosed god

you

whose absence thieves all sleep

first currency

first ruminant

cloven-hoofed thing..'

This interesting collection reminds us of our connection to these gentle creatures who we rely on for milk, meat and manure. Quietly contemplating the ever changing world around them our countryside would look so empty without fields of cows, in shades of browns and russet, dappled in black and white, quietly ruminating, they consider us with their quiet eyes. 

Milking Before Dawn by Ruth Dallas

In the drifting rain the cows in the yard are as black

And wet and shiny as rocks in an ebbing tide..'

Ten poems about Cows is a gentle appreciation of everything bovine and would be perfect, instead of a card, for anyone who loves cows, the countryside, or the natural world.

About the Publisher

Candlestick Press is a small, independent press publishing sumptuously produced poetry pamphlets that serve as a wonderful alternative to a greetings card, with matching envelopes and bookmarks left blank for your message. Their subjects include Mountains, Clouds, Walking, Birds, Wine and Happiness. Candlestick Press pamphlets are stocked by chain and independent bookshops, galleries and garden centres nationwide and available to order online.

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