The Heeding

"Dazzling, moving... A book that will touch many, and be given often: here, take this, you must read this." --Robert Macfarlane "So vivid... A call out to our elemental relationship with love and nature. Beautiful." --Willem Dafoe The world changed in 2020. Gradually at first, then quickly and irreversibly, the patterns by which we once lived altered completely. Across four seasons and a luminous series of poems and illustrations, Rob Cowen and Nick Hayes paint a picture of a year caught in the grip of history yet filled with revelatory perspectives close at hand. A sparrowhawk hunting in a back street; the moon over a town with a loved one's hand held tight; butterflies massing in a high-summer yard--the everyday wonders and memories that shape a life and help us recall our own. The Heeding leads us on a journey that takes its markers and signs from nature and a world filled with fear and pain but beauty and wonder too. Collecting birds, animals, trees, and people together, it is a profound meditation to a time no one will forget. At its heart, this is a book that helps us look again, to heed: to be attentive to this world we share, to grieve what's lost, and to hope for a better and brighter tomorrow. "The light shines through this book. Poetry is a kind of breathing space and Rob Cowen has taken to it. Domestic in the best sense of the word - small scale, intimate, known - it is tender in as many senses of that word as there are. I am deeply grateful for it." --Tim Dee, author, Landfill