By Jeremy Miles
Anyone of a certain age who grew up in the countryside, particular in a beautiful county like Dorset will have memories of playing among fields and trees surrounded by the wonder of plants and wildlife.
When the Oxford Junior Dictionary decided to drop a series of ‘nature words’ from its pages arguing that they were no longer relevant to childhood there was not surprisingly an outcry.
In a bid to get the dictionary to reconsider its position, a campaign was launched by writers including such literary giants as Margaret Atwood and Andrew Motion.
Consigned to the lexicographical dustbin were words like acorn, adder, bluebell, dandelion, and catkin. There were many others. In came broadband, blog, chat-room, celebrity and voicemail. It seemed like an attack on the very tradition of healthy outdoor play. Some felt it was actively encouraging solitary indoor childhoods.
No one was more appalled than the writer, poet and academic Robert Macfarlane. A life-long nature lover and activist, he teamed up with artist and illustrator Jackie Morris to produce The Lost Words, a celebration of the names of plants, birds and animals that were deemed no longer worthy of inclusion in the Junior Dictionary.
When it was first published in 2017 the book became a near-instant bestseller and has now been translated into several languages, and adapted for film, drama, dance, radio, classical music and folk song.
It even inspired a grassroots movement to put a copy in every primary school in England, Wales and Scotland with Dorset campaigners at the forefront of local funding and distribution.
A touring Lost Words exhibition organised by Compton Verney, with Hamish Hamilton and Penguin Books visited venues nationwide including the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum here in Bournemouth.
Suitable for all ages, it featured 20 acrostic “spell-poems” alongside the 50 watercolour and gold-leaf paintings that were used to create the original book. It combined Robert Macfarlane’s poetic words and Jackie Morris’s artwork in a show that harnessed the power of nature and love of language. It celebrated the magic of the natural world and reclaimed those words that, at the stroke of an editor’s pen, were ditched as irrelevancies.
I took the opportunity to talk to the authors about their passionate campaign to save these vital connections to the natural world. This is what I wrote. It originally appeared in an article published in Dorset magazine last year.
It seems the protests to the Oxford Junior Dictionary fell on deaf ears. “I’m afraid the dictionary’s response was ‘It’s none of your business. It’s our editorial decision,’ says Jackie. “We thought we can make a book that will reverse this.”
They hadn’t realised that no sooner had the book been published than the project would begin to take on a life of its own. “Not in my wildest dreams could I have foreseen what the book would become, admits Robert. “It’s as though Jackie and I just planted an acorn and up rushed a wild-wood. It has become a movement that has been taken on by other people and institutions. It’s not really ours anymore. It’s been used in schools all over the British Isles and even featured in a prom concert at the Albert Hall. None of it could have been foreseen.”
He stresses that he doesn’t regard the loss of so many evocative words as the fault of the dictionary. “It is culture or society’s fault. This separation of our lives and our imaginations from everyday nature has become very pronounced.”
It is, he believes, a symptom of the “ecological chaos and precarity” we are living through. “If we are going to get out of this we need to begin at the beginning. We have to grow our way out of it by learning the names of the creatures and plants we share our everyday lives with and then teach them to the children.”
Robert and Jackie both speak with delight about the effect their stories, images, spells and poems, can have on young hearts and minds.
“Kids hunger for the utterly beautiful stuff that is right on the doorstep,” says Jackie. “They love getting muddy and watching insects and birds. We are giving them a tool with which they can re-wild their parents.”
She argues that children are naturally visually literate and understand the words and pictures in The Lost Words in an intuitive way.
“Adults can take five, six or seven readings to realise what is going on. Kids get it right away. They understand the value of natural beauty before they learn about money but then everything goes belly up.”
Jackie describes herself as “an anarchist and anti-capitalist”. I venture that it must be a little awkward when the cheques roll in. Jackie laughs: “You know what? It’s lovely being able to give it away. It’s a question of knowing when you’ve got enough and when to share rather than hoard.”
She’s 61 and feels lucky to have found success relatively late in life. She says that 40 years of working as a freelance artist and illustrator has given her valuable life experience.
“It has equipped me with the nous to stand my ground and not be pigeon-holed by anyone. I raised two kids as a single mother using only my brush and pen. I always had to worry about how to pay the bills until The Lost Words. Now it looks after me, bless it.”
Robert comes from a rather different background. He is a 47-year-old multi-award-winning writer, a Fellow of Emmanuel Colledge, Cambridge, and widely known for his books on nature and landscape.
The Wall Street Journal has described him as “the great nature writer and nature poet of this generation” and in 2018 he co-edited, with Chris Packham and Patrick Barkham, A People’s Manifesto For Wildlife, arguing for urgent and large-scale change in Britain’s relationship with nature. Ten thousand people marched on Whitehall to deliver it to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
“Access to nature is a political issue. It’s an economic issue and that is why the book has become associated in many cases with activism and protest,” he says.
“We want to bring childhood and the natural world back together again. Children are naturals with nature. They are wondernauts. They make up their own names and make up their own stories. Every day we receive photographs and videos of children working with the book in their schools or home education settings and it is lovely to see the creativity that has been drummed out of much of schooling by successive governments sneaking back in.”