WATCH: Robert Macfarlane, Jackie Morris, and Nicola Davies in Conversation

The Hay Festival, now in its 21st year, brings writers and readers together in a free digital space of thoughtful conversation, storytelling, comedy, and family fun. This year, the Festival has been streamed live with a star-studded line-up of speakers and performers, and is currently available for public viewing.

Below, poet Robert Macfarlane joins artist and writer Jackie Morris in conversation about their collaboration The Lost Spells, a poetry collection that has been written to be read aloud. The Lost Spells summons back what is often lost from sight and care, and inspires protection and action on behalf of the natural world. And above all, it celebrates a sense of wonder, bearing witness to nature’s power to amaze, console and bring joy.

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From the video:

Robert Macfarlane: There are two names on this book but there are dozens, really, that should be here. It’s a collaboration between between and Jackie but also between so many readers, so many children, so many grownups, our designer, our editors. Like any book, it’s a misnomer to think of it as by any one or two people. But it is collaborative. I would typically send the spell or a whisper of a spell, that Jackie beforehand often served me up with a shopping list. She always asked very nicely, and she has this very clever way of seeing things in my ideas and she’ll write her own sentences around the idea and they’re often the seed crystals that precipitate the first words or the first images in my mind. So her words beget my words and then often my words head over to Jackie in an email or a WhatsApp.

For access to the Festival’s full archive, please visit hayfestival.org/hayplayer, and support their work at hayfestival.org/support-us.