The first of two bumper spring-specials. Buckle up for the season of increasing abundance! This month Archie Cornish and I sat in the boot of my Citroen Berlingo in Ashdown Forest and talked through the March eclogue, to the puzzlement of passing dog-walkers. Archie’s reading of the poem emphasises the value of pastoral attention, the Greek roots of this poem, why Elizabethans were obsessed with bird-catching, and the importance of getting tangled up in nets. Read more of his thoughtfulness here!
I also had the huge pleasure of talking to Jill, Jon and John, the current senior members of the legendary Copper family of Sussex. Husband and wife team Jon and Jill open this episode with a snippet of the venerable old song, ‘Shepherd of the Downs’. Here is some archival footage of a much earlier recording. The three of them were incredibly gracious and kind to let me turn up in their kitchen and ask them questions about what it is like to have inherited–and spread around the world–the vast folk song collection that their father (in-law), Bob Copper, had himself inherited from his father, Jim, and his father, James, before him.
Finally, the episode is tied together by the voices of members of the Deep Throat Choir collective, who gathered into a kitchen on a March Sunday to sing for two members who are due to give birth very soon. They will sing us out to the words of a Cherokee proverb: “when you were born you cried, and the world rejoiced; live your life so that when you die the world cries, and you rejoice”.
Thank you to the Copper family – especially Jill, John and Jon – for their generosity and brilliance at telling humorous anecdotes, and the inspiring work that they have done to keep folk music alive. Thank you to Archie for a fascinating conversation. Thank you to the members of the Deep Throat collective for sharing their voices, to Mary and Michael for describing the woodcut, to Joseph Minden for being Thomalin, to NH Chaundler for our latest instalment of poetic responses to the calendar, to Ella Mahony for the art, and to Femi Oriogun-Williams for mixing, mastering and the original theme music.
