Black and white, brown, smooth-coated or shaggy (with horns), cows are so familiar in our rural landscapes that we often forget to notice them.
 
These poems redress that, paying close and loving attention to the lives of cows – their private joys and public duties – while celebrating the fact of their undeniable cow-ness.
 
We find cows grazing, being born, being milked, being drawn by a child – not to mention the eminently recitable cow poem that many of us will remember from school days:
 
“The friendly cow, all red and white,
I love with all my heart:
She gives me cream with all her might,
To eat with apple-tart.”
from ‘The Cow’ by Robert Louis Stevenson
 
Even if most of us wouldn’t want to become a cow in the way that Selima Hill does, we can all enjoy being taken by poetry into their contented, munching world.
 
The selection is edited by poet Hilary Menos who used to run a herd of 40 pedigree Red Ruby Devon cattle.
 
Poems by Hayden Carruth, Jim Carruth, Gillian Clarke, Edmund Vance Cooke, Ruth Dallas, Tjawangwa Dema, Selima Hill, Hilary Menos, Evan Gill Smith and Robert Louis Stevenson.
Cover illustration by Deirdre Dunne.
 
Donation to Compassion in World Farming.