Poems by Harry Man

Song for a Spotted Flycatcher 
 
Song following lad twist-rodeos the ifs
of forward flight falling up the buzzed
toothy new buds of lilac white wigged berries
nightclub ultra-lit, stump humid lintstudded
treehouse clutchdown up in the nosebleeds
perch-ease fold in the shake, chatter ‘n’ scold of robins,
who teek teek to the geordie metro yellow gold topped
leafhoppers over this year’s hottest spots to de-sting wasps
or share catkin doggybagged money spiders,
a whip-quick moth snatch, hoverfly yes-please,
leatherjacket rich nectar hoopla, on the starch cartilage
bark-ridge mosswork. Figures in the dawn steam,
fingers of light, finch-strobed craneflies dogfight
about chicken of the woods, the bossed out fungus
with feather-headed rivals, midge-fed twig rippers
listen to the double dipper kingfishers, wrens glitterballed
in the shadowwork of oak-side sunwise creak-waft,
zip transfixed with inflight stories of Sudan, Mogadishu--
Have you been? Dodoma? Maputo? Harare?
Dar es Salaam? Seen the Nile meet the Med
like a graveside note that melts down the forever
of the earth, watched wildebeest turn and stagger
and ripple like poppyseed and ash off a black plate
in the Rwenzori Mountains, fountains rising
from their feet from a thousand feet?
The world over, we should go together
and come back again. Your song longing in my throat,
again, again. We should go together
and come back again. The world over,
I’ll follow your voice like a holiday.
 
 
 
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Spotted Flycatchers winter in sub-Saharan Africa and have suffered an 89% decline in the UK since the 1960s.
To hunt, they fly from a high perch, dash out to grab a flying insect and return to the same spot.

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Slowing Heart Rate of the Northern Pool Frog 
 
Armoured naked frog bodies bathe flannelled
in pond blanket lily channels, summer-emerge
while water soldiers rise from defrosted graves
like answering the door to the sunlight
in the middle of a shave. Attack-ships
post-chrysalis damselflies in shiny squadrons
boost amphipods from the bubble horizon,
surface water skin reslickens your chin,
when all you want to do is swim, swim,
swim among the milfoils and hornworts,
as the starworts envelop the next generation
spawn floating in rafts, living experiments
turn into their own embryonic bodies.
Air gulleted, bubblegum boils croak
that new shoe leather on wax floors tune.
The frost will be back soon, our frog bodies
slow down like old October, learn stillness,
the art of gentle little repetitions –
submarine still heart of still living things.
 
 

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For many years since its discovery, The Northern Pool Frog was considered to be a foreign invader. However thanks to detailed studies conducted in the mid-1990s including on the vocalisations made by the frog, it was found to be native to Britain. Unfortunately the species was driven to extinction, in part by the loss of a type of glacier-formed pond called the pingo, which were formed in Britain during the Ice Age. A reintroduction programme is ongoing, with imported Pool Frogs from Sweden who have been bred successfully and reintroduced to Thompson Pond in Norfolk where the frog was last seen in the wild (among other locations).

Harry Man’s first pamphlet, Lift won the UNESCO Bridges of Struga Award, his second pamphlet, on endangered species of the British Isles, Finders Keepers was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry. His co-collection authored with Endre Ruset, Deretter (‘Thereafter’, Flamme Forlag, 2021) won the Stephen Spender Prize for Translation and was a Dagblaget and Broken Sleep Books Book of the Year. He has also translated Endre Ruset’s poetry collection Noriaki (Broken Sleep Books) into English which contains a foreword by bestselling crime novelist Jo Nesbø. His latest book, Popular Song was published by Nine Arches Press (2024). He teaches at the University of Oxford and lives in County Durham. www.manmadebooks.co.uk
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