Broadlands

Born in Norfolk in 1978, Matt Howard is a poet and environmentalist. After working in various roles for the RSPB for more than a decade, Matt was appointed as the Douglas Caster Cultural Fellow in Poetry at the University of Leeds 2021-2023. His first pamphlet The Organ Box was published by Eyewear in 2014 and his debut collection Gall was published by The Rialto in 2018. His second book-length collection, Broadlands, is published by Bloodaxe in 2024. Gall won the inaugural Laurel Prize for Best First Collection in 2020 and the 2018 East Anglian Book Award for Poetry and was also shortlisted for the 2019 Seamus Heaney Centre First Collection Prize. Matt is also an editor and events programmer. He co-founded The RSPB and The Rialto Nature and Place Poetry Competition in 2011 and was co-editor of Magma 72 – The Climate Change Issue. He has served as a trustee and steering group member of New Networks for Nature, an eco-organisation comprising a broad alliance of creators working to assert the central importance of landscape and nature in our cultural life. He has been poet in residence for the Cambridge Conservation Initiative and also the Wordsworth Trust. Since 2018 he has been a Trustee of The Rialto.

11 Stand in Late May
12 Reedbed
13 Nest Surveying I, 17/4/17
14 Cults of Broadland
16 Queen Wasp
17 See how the rotary ditcher is
18 Fen Meadow
19 Another Murmuration
20 The Pond
21 Nest Surveying, II, 17/4/17
22 Marbled Orb Weaver
23 Rides
24 Parasitoid and Host
26 The wood is too far a walk now
27 Apocrypha I
28 First Nightingale
29 Loke
30 Wade’s
31 The Dreams of the Salmon Farmer and his Wife
32 The Biology of Spiders
33 Cat’s Eye
34 The Stag at the Gate
36 Hock
37 Second-hand smoke
38 Sedition Song
39 An Acte for the preservation of Grayne, 1566
40 Chemical Chorus
41 Ridge and Furrow
42 Tench
43 Teneral
44 Earthstars
45 Apocrypha II
46 Displays
48 Swallowtail
49 The germ of the world is one place
50 Spores
52 Ballomania
53 Neurone
54 St Mark’s Flies
55 Odonatologists’ Anecdote
56 Amen
57 On the restoration of the cuckoo clock at Dove Cottage
58 Horse chestnut
59 Apocrypha III
60 On the snail in medieval manuscripts
61 Courtship
62 We all have needs
63 Purple
64 Reedbed in August
65 Trespass Song
66 Familiars
67 Sedge Warbler
68 Where four-spotted chasers make a window in the fen
69 Exuviae Survey
70 Nettle-tap
71 Though the singing season’s done with