I had been thinking today that if asked to describe the East Anglian Landscape I could perhaps describe the landscape to someone who had never visited here, from the Broads to Fens, the undulating fields of North Norfolk, vast beaches, heathlands, and the Brecklands and dominated by the Big Skies of East Anglia.

But then I wondered what would be the typical sound of East Anglia? as a child I would have said the constant cries of gulls, mainly Herring Gulls, growing up near Lowestoft there were always gulls, that and excited shouts in Summer of people on the beach.

But these would be just the sounds of the coast, not of the whole landscape East Anglia, but I think the one sound that for me reflects the East Anglian landscape is that of the Skylark, I have heard it on the coast, on heath and in land on agricultural land and pasture.

I have heard its song as early as February, I am sure most people can identify its song and I bet like me they always look up to see if they can spy this small brown bird as it ascends to a great height only to drop like a parachute back to earth, it reminds me of childhood years spent exploring the Suffolk fields near my home and the constant song of a skylark always seemed to be there in the background.

Poets like Shelly and the East Anglian poet John Clare were inspired by the skylark, I heard a poem this year read on Radio 2 by Issac Rosenberg who was killed in the Somme in 1918, he wrote a poem about a skylark after returning from a night patrol and hearing  a skylark singing, it must have been a reminder of home amongst the horror he was enduring.

Returning we hear the Larks

Sombre the night is.
And though we have our lives, we know
What sinister threat lies there.

Dragging these anguished limbs, we only know
This poison-blasted track opens on our camp –
On a little safe sleep.

But hark! joy – joy – strange joy.
Lo! heights of night ringing with unseen larks.
Music showering our upturned list’ning faces.

Death could drop from the dark
As easily as song –
But song only dropped,
Like a blind man’s dreams on the sand
By dangerous tides,
Like a girl’s dark hair for she dreams no ruin lies there,
Or her kisses where a serpent hides.

Issac Rosenberg