William Blake once said that ‘the tree which moves some to tears of joy is, in the eyes of others, only a Green thing that stands in the way’. The latter perception is all too true in Britain and Ireland. HS2 alone has accounted for the 250-year-old Cubbington Pear Tree and the 300-year-old Hunningham Oak, both felled in 2020 despite the opposition of thousands of protesters. Then of course there was the Sycamore Gap Tree. In this illustrated talk James will argue that only if we recapture the sacred vision of trees and landscapes prevalent in ancient times – when trees were believed to house hamadryads – will we value them enough not to destroy them. Using mythic material from Ovid’s tale of Erysichthon, and poems by John Clare, Edward Thomas, Pierre de Ronsard, GM Hopkins, Thomas Hardy and Charlotte Mew, he will explore whether the poetic imagination can act as a positive force-field against vandalism and bureaucratic despoliation.

James Harpur is a poet and Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Trinity College, Dublin. His latest books are The Gospel of Gargoyle (poetry), The Pathless Country (novel) and Dazzling Darkness: the Lives and Afterlives of the Christian Mystics (non-fiction). He is a Fellow of the Temenos Academy.

Venue & Admission

The Meditatio Centre, St Marks Church, Myddelton Square, London EC1R 1XX

£10 General Admission

FREE for Temenos Academy Members/Full-time students with ID card