Anne Cluysenaar Seren, 2008, ISBN 9781854114648 IN BATU-ANGAS, A
sequence of twenty-four poems, a modern poet encounters a 19th-
century scientist to whom she was drawn on the basis of a shared
sense of wonder at the natural world. Anne Cluysenaar lives on a
small farm in Gwent, not far from the River Usk, on whose banks,
in a small cottage, Alfred Russel Wallace was born in 1823.
Wallace, best known as co-discoverer, with Charles Darwin, of
the Theory of Evolution through natural selection, left written
records of his explorations in Amazonia and the Malay
Archipelago, as well as specimens of rare insects and other
creatures. Cluysenaar has, therefore, rich sources to draw on.
These include Wallace’s words, and visual images relating to his
discoveries, with which her book is beautifully illustrated.
Batu-Angas is thus the poetic record of a relationship that the
poet has formed with the scientist over a period of years, and
of explorations in which, in imagination, she participates with
him. It is also a boo