Oh, Happy England is my song-cycle of Walter de la Mare poetry settings that draws from his lesser-known work from the first half of the 20th Century. These sung poems explore inner and outer landscapes, dream, the imagination, fear, hauntings and darker moments of the mind. There are references to nature, war, loneliness, time, ghosts and enchantment.

‘…folk-horror of the darkest hue…his voice soaring like Scott Walker… Bird Radio fulfils his early promise as a musical storyteller of rare power.’ Steve Hunt - fRoots.

1. ‘J.T. / Here Lies Old Bones’
Walter de la Mare illuminates, by the light of a candle, pathways that lead far back, far down, and far within. These ways are muddy and fertile, like the subconscious, a space where there are no limits, no borders, no policing and no rules. Here, anything is possible. Here, we can be home and whole. With my voice and feet I summon Jane Taylor and Sam Gilpin via Walter, spirits of curiosity and dream. Calling sweet, dark, wild creation: we are here.

2. ‘The Owl’
I cycled the Sailors’ Path daily for a month, travelling between Aldeburgh and Snape Maltings in Suffolk (the site of Aldeburgh Music, founded by Benjamin Britten, where I had been award- ed their Open Space composition residency in 2014). It was deep in the winter of January, and my evening rides through the woods were headlamp-lit, otherwise I would have been swal- lowed up by the pitch-black void. Owls swooped and hooted overhead, rabbits and hares drew audible lines in the leaves as they scurried across my path and bulls’ eyes hung like shimmering planets, barely moving yet gracefully following this peculiar (and slightly terrified) mammal cutting the silent mist with the insistent squeaking wheels of his borrowed bike, crunching twigs and leaves as he hurried towards the safety of the street lamps. This elemental, essential and animal night reminded me of the infinite page/space from where Walter’s poems arose as hauntings and echoes that grew stronger the more I paid heed to them. Meanwhile, ghostly fingers beckoned and held up black mirrors in the dark woods.

3. ‘All That’s Past / Winter’
These two poems happened to be printed on the same page in the first book of Walter’s poetry that I came across in 2008, a selection edited by Matthew Sweeney. Thanks to this serendipity they became conjoined for life in my experience of them. I recorded a version of the setting in 2010, initially declaring, nearly shouting, ‘Clouded with snow the bleak winds blow...’, and now, as time has passed, I sing these words with quietude, in awe of the elements. In the apparent absence of life during winter one can pay closer attention to detail. Walter finds life in the icy stillness, the robin, the changing light, frost-fires and the moon. He is heightening our senses. I am still here in the woods, I can see my breath, the cold is making me drowsy, and I have stopped singing, for now is the time to listen. Our descent continues and Walter leads on, unhurried and unafraid.

4. ‘The Stranger’
Sometimes a stranger enters our life, take us by the hand and offers us something we need, asking for nothing in return. This must be one of the most beautiful encounters we can have. Often, the stranger reaches out through the page of a book, a painting, a film or a song. By creating, we reach out beyond the confines of time and space. We may doubt that what we have to share means anything to anyone, or is of any importance, but that is not our decision, it is outside our control. In a hundred years someone may read a poem we have written and it could change their perception of the world, and in turn, themselves. In this way we can be effective within and beyond our breathing years as long as we dream on, fearlessly.

5. ‘Happy England’
Is it not painful enough that age and illness pull us apart? Yet we continue to destroy and deny life, we blot out the sun. ‘Remember happy England’, for if we lose faith in humanity, we lose everything. ‘Keep for her bright cause thy latest breath’, for only by being present together can we grow together. What is England? It is a story. And we, with each action, decide where the story goes. I want this story to involve love and empathy for those that we have displaced.

6. ‘Motley’
There is only so much you can do on your own. I realized this mid-performance at King’s Place with four incredible musicians, a family of fools singing hopelessly together to Death, Pity and Love. The more hopeless we are told to feel, the more we sing, because actually there is hope, our voices are full of beauty and power, even more so when we sing together. We are life! Let us celebrate madness! Because madness is nonconformity. Madness is listening and truth. Wal- ter differentiates between his ‘simple happy’ madness and the ‘Satan-mad’ warmongers. He doesn’t give up. He keeps writing. And after everything has been said and done, he tells Love to pray; there is still hope.

7. ‘Fear’
I composed this album in the dovecote, a stand-alone building on the site of Aldeburgh Music. I dragged a fallen branch from a pine tree inside and made animal masks with paper bags and felt tips to place around the space, to bring the outside in. I think the idea was to make manifest the poem space, and it tied in with my interest in the relationship between architecture and sound. The foundations of these sound structures are the poems themselves, already containing shape, space and rhythm. They also inform atmosphere and time. These latter components are the most interesting to me in music-making and performance. There was a small staircase in the dovecote that led to a platform with a desk and a window overlooking the reed beds with the wind rushing through them as a perfect natural symphony. The wood of the building cracked and popped as the temperature rose and fell during the day, itself an instrument like the body of a piano or a cello. It felt like being alone on a ship at sea and these sounds became the basis for the atmosphere and time space of ‘Fear’.

8. ‘Drugged’
And then it becomes too much and the fall is sudden and painful. I make another black coffee and go for a walk. But when there is a leak in the bottom of the boat, you can’t hold the water back with your bare hands. Help is needed, but pride can get in the way. So we allow the body and mind to drown, and there we leave it. We are outside the body, watching it from afar, life- less, a weak imitation of itself, whatever ‘itself’ was. Addicted to the spiral motion that ties it to the chair or bed, divisions and definitions vanish, all is nothing. Those night beasts are back, they’re right there, but this time your bicycle is broken and your headlamp is extinguished.

9. ‘The Monologue’
The mirror in the woods is the only hope we have now, but it is blackened with dirt and dust from years of neglect and evasion. If we reach up and wipe it clean, we might see ourselves, we might see what we have become. This confrontation is the most terrifying of all. You might find that you are far from what you believed yourself to be. Walter’s eloquence in this subject is wonderful. He addresses himself in ‘The Monologue’ and recognizes his own self-impris- onment. He invites us so generously into this space, calling through the bars to himself and by doing so he calls to us through the bars of time and distance of another generation, through the page, an open door to a fire-lit room, warmth, hope and shelter.

10. ‘I Sit Alone’
What we see in the mirror is for ourselves, and ourselves alone. When we occupy our present body and mind we can finally be alone. We can finally accept our truth. We can own our fear, and our joy. No more borrowing means a great deal more sharing. This poem proves that it is a long journey to find the true meaning of such a simple word.
WALTER DE LA MARE SOCIETY MAGAZINE, NOVEMBER 2015 19

11. ‘Never-To-Be’
Lighthouses were never far from my consciousness during my summer holidays in Wales as a child. They were a symbol of permanence to young eyes. Surrounded by such vastness, they are signs of life. A heartbeat that never falters. Walter leads us out of the woods now, together we climb the steep paths seeking the view of the sea from the cliffs, the wind ruffling our hair, the scent of rain, fingers numb from the cold. We come from this, and there we shall return. What ecstasy! What joy! This is it! You can almost hear the crashing waves as you turn the page.

12. ‘Time Passes’
‘Oh, Happy England’ was recorded in the Britten Studio at Aldeburgh Music in July and August 2014. When you open the album, there is a photograph of me reaching up to the giant win- dow at the back of the beautiful wooden concert hall. We had instruments laid out across the performance space: grand piano, upright piano, reed organ, drum kit, cello, guitars and flutes. Throughout the day the light from the window would sweep from left to right, illuminating the instruments one at a time.

13. ‘The Englishman’
Home. It is more of a feeling than a place. Bread and butter and bird song, in this case, are home. It is sad if we row so far away that we may not recognize ourselves if or when we return. Home was there from the beginning, but we had to make this journey in order to arrive. This sailor has made it, he has returned. His final gesture is to look once more out at sea.

14. ‘The Song of Shadows’
The arrival. That dreadful feeling when you read the last page of a book. That world ceases to exist. Songs come to an end and new ones begin. Now we must continue our own story. ‘Across the walls the shadows come, and go’. Walter leaves us here with a smile, the door slightly ajar.