The April full moon is the Growing Moon or Pink Moon, representing the growth of love and the harvest season.

November’s Celtic full moon names are the Dark Moon or Oak Moon, a time to cultivate healthy habits and let go of negativity. Marking the end of the growing season, ancient Celts referred to the October full moon as the Harvest Moon, Seed Fall Moon, or Hunter's Moon. Aligning with the celebration of Samhain, October is a good time to honor loved ones who have passed on. It is also a good time to do spiritual and physical house cleaning, getting rid of what doesn't serve you in the coming year. September’s full moon is the Singing Moon, Harvest Moon, or Wine Moon. It’s a time to celebrate Mabon and the balance of light and dark and give thanks for all blessings in life.

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Breathtaking prose. Sometimes witty in a sort of delightful phosphor spark. Even though the Dorset climate is different than here in Calcutta, I wrote down some remarkable similarities too such as the changes in flowering time and the appearance of birds during changes in seasons- called the phenological mismatch- thanks to climate change. Can you provide more information about the connection between the Celtic people and celestial bodies like stars?

As you can see from the Celtic full moon names above, they often named them after events, such as harvest season. This is typical of many ancient societies as they often had big celebrations during these periods. That repeated word “loud”, describing the “owlet’s cry”, primes our ears, or rather, our mind’s ear, or what Robert Frost called the imagining ear, to listen for a certain pitch of sound, heightening the shift into quiet that follows. Through the calm, the “strange and extreme silentness”, a thin blue flame comes into focus. Perfectly still. Not a quiver. Like the string of a lute, silent in stillness. Only the film of soot is moving now, fluttering on the grate, not still as in quiet, but, with a slight adjustment, still fluttering, moving, continuing to move, against the grate of the fire. It is “the sole unquiet thing”. On Thursday 13th April we are happy to host an in-store event with author Kevin Parr, who will present his latest book THE QUIET MOON: Pathways to an Ancient Way of Being. One of our favorite Celtic full moon names is Flower Moon, which is May’s full moon. It is a time to tend to your own life and ensure that the seeds you’ve planted continue to grow.Nature approaches her peak during a summer of short nights and bright days – this was when the ancient Celts claimed their wives and celebrated Lugnasad. Wordsworth, remembering his own listening. In these lines from ‘There Was a Boy’, which Wordsworth returned to and recast in The Prelude, the boy of Winander is listening. Suspended in the silence, he hears a voice. Not hears, but receives. It is the voice not of owls, but of mountain-torrents. And he receives this sound, this voice, not in his ears, but in his heart. Not in his heart, but far into his heart. Those short words far and into open up great distances: a voice travelling over the hills, across the valleys. Then the surprise intimacy of heart. At once far off and near. The listening heart. The heart transformed, expanded, opened up by listening. By the voice of mountain waters. A voice which disembodies. Which opens up great distances, transforms the heart’s dimensions. In his great poem ‘Frost at Midnight’, written in February 1798, under a new moon, Coleridge is listening. And inviting us to listen with him. To the silence of frost on a windless night. Broken by the call of an owlet. His ear notices that it’s an owlet, rather than an owl. A young owl. Inside the cottage, it is calm. His baby son Hartley slumbers in his arms. The poem that emerges is a listening meditation. Listen.

In this short poem ‘(Sound travels so far)’, Hadfield plays with greyscale font of various sizes to suggest a state of heightened listening. The typographic variances also register shifts of volume, amplification and diminuendo. Like Oswald, she plays with graphic codes for volume. If the shrinking font in ‘A Star Here and a Star There’ suggests distance and quiet, in her later long poem, ‘Tithonus’, from Falling Awake (2016), Oswald uses fading coloured font to convey a dimming of sound, a visual language for quietening. In the poem’s final lines, the ink gradually fades, so that the concluding word, “appearing”, is almost invisible, printed in the very lightest shade of grey, as dawn, and light, appear. This fading out produces in visual language an aural effect, the suggestion of diminuendo, in the way that bold or capital letters, larger font size or italics can suggest a louder volume. The sunset in the south-west is impressive, yet the moonrise has brought layers of lavender, rose and saffron that are soft like watercolour and yet dazzle like acrylic. And near the top sits the moon, a neat circle of clotted cream topping a slice of rainbow sponge. The ancient Celts lived by and worshipped the moon. While modern, digital life is often at odds with nature – rubbing against it rather than working in harmony with it – is there something to be said for embracing this ancient way of being and reconnecting to the moon’s natural calendar?*

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The ancient Celts lived by and worshipped the moon. While modern, digital life is often at odds with nature – rubbing against it rather than working in harmony with it – is there something to be said for embracing this ancient way of being and reconnecting to the moon’s natural calendar? This in some ways is incredibly difficult to review. I can’t really put my finger on the exact reason why, but I really liked this book. But, I think it is because he is forging his own philosophy in his local landscape. There are things he writes about that I haven’t contemplated yet and need time to go away and think about them.

It is a strange coincidence that I finished reading Kevin Parr’s The Quiet Moon on a New Moon. It made me think of several conversations in recent weeks about the calendar year, alternative calendars, and the concept of time. Austin Kleon wrote about the difference between experiencing time as linear vs. circular. How almanacs and lunar cycles observe the passage of time as the birth and rebirth of seasons, crops, and life itself. Humankind has needed a linear time structure to record and plan events. It is how the world runs. But simultaneously, the pandemic showed us that experience of time is subjective. It waxes and wanes just like the moon despite what the calendar says. I love how Parr describes ‘time’ in the prologue of this book: These lines, this listening, is from Oswald’s sonnet ‘Wood not yet out’. The line break after “listening down” invites the reader to listen down to the next line, “to the releasing branches”. That word “down” in “listening down” gives direction to an act which is not usually directed downwards: we don’t usually “listen down the lane” as we might “look down the lane”, more usually we listen to or for something, sometimes listen up, or, perhaps, we might just listen. Coleridge invites us to listen and to think, and think again, about the music of quiet, and the words we use to describe it. Peaceful. Calm. Still. Hush. Dim. Secret. That word “secret” in the very first line of the poem would have suggested quiet to Coleridge’s first readers, since “secret” carried the sense, no longer current, of reticence, of quiet and closeness (keeping something close, keeping it secret). A secret is unsounded. Silent. The frost “performs a secret ministry”. We do not hear the icy patterns forming on the windowpane. Nor do we hear the poem’s first rhyme, between “ministry” and “cry”, it is an eye rhyme, silent.

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Reflecting on listening in her essay ‘The Universe in time of rain makes the world alive with noise’ (2000), Oswald describes it as The naming of the full moons often corresponded to specific events and celebrations, such as harvest season.