Michael Baron's On a Bat's Wing: Poems About Bats is a wonderfully batty collection of poems about the common chiroptera. You might not think that there would be enough poems about bats to fill a book. But poets have always hung out where bats hang out.

From Ovid to Ted Hughes, poets have been fascinated by these extraordinary creatures of nightmare and darkness, ritual, myth and superstition. It's fascinating to compare the different ways - psychological, mythic, comic and surreal - that so many poets, including Emily Dickinson, DH Lawrence, Vicki Feaver, Gillian Clarke and Seamus Heaney, have written about the same subject.

Not long ago, following some chiropterophobic remarks in this column, I was reproached in gentle terms by the mild-mannered members of our great nation's bat-fancying community. At last I have the chance to make amends, by recommending a book of poems about bats. Who knew there were enough good poems about bats to make a chapbook, far less an entire anthology? Yet here they are – wonderful poems by Seamus Heaney, Emily Dickinson, William Shakespeare, D H Lawrence, John Updike and dozens of others. I particularly enjoyed Frank Jacobs's poem, which ends: "Bats when flying undismayed are;/ Bats are careful; bats use radar;/ Bats at night-time at their best are; Bats by Batman unimpressed are!"

Bats are still around for Hallowe'en, adding a ghostly touch to proceedings, but they will soon disappear into hibernation. This delightful collection of bat poetry will keep them fluttering in the mind through the winter nights.

Theodore Roethke is startled that "mice with wings can wear a human face", Geraldine Green thinks their wings are "torn shreds of velvet ribbon", George MacBeth describes them sleeping in their cave as "a snore of strap-hangers... without an Evening Standard between them"...

It is also interesting how the way that these poets write about bats unconsciously highlights their own characteristics - sentimental, frivolous, boring, moving, brilliant. The subject seems to be a catalyst for sorting them out as writers. It's amazing what bats can do!

Read more at: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/poetry/article2745734.ece

Derwent May

On a Bat’s Wing, poems about bats, edited by Michael Baron. – royalties to the Bat Conservation Trust.

Bats haunt the human imagination. For proof you only need dip into Michael Baron’s new poetry collection: On a Bat’s Wing.

It contains 77 bat poems by poets ranging from Ted Hughes to Shakespeare and Seamus Heaney, through some of Cumbria’s own best-known poets such as Jacob Polley, whose contribution is published for the first time.

On a Bat’s Wing was launched at the National Bat Conference at York University on Saturday. It is available in bookshops, with all the royalties going to the Bat Conservation Trust.

“I would be surprised if anywhere there’s an anthology of so many poems written over such a long period of time, devoted to one animal,” says Michael, who has brought together two of his loves – literature and bats – in compiling this book.

“They are creatures of the night: they represent mystery, flight; they echo-locate; here’s the spooky – Dracula and vampires; hey are associated with ideas of death. They bring up a whole range of things in the poet’s imagination,” he says.

Bats have not always been appreciated. When they were finally protected by law in 1981 Auberon Waugh commented: “I do not suppose there are more than a couple of hundred people (who) could give a hoot if every bat in the kingdom dropped down dead. I, for one, would rejoice.”

But Michael’s collection of poems – which he hopes will inspire curiosity and respect – shows we have a deep fascination.

There’s humour: “Bats are creepy; bats are scary/Bats do not seem sanitary” (Frank Jacobs). Theodore Roethke observes: “Mice with wings can wear a human face”. John Updike writes: “They are subconscious, bats, and bubble up like prejudice”.

Some poets imagine what it’s like to be a bat. Elizabeth Barrett compares the silent bat, and a quest to hear it with a bat detector machine, to her efforts to understand her silent, autistic son.

Michael Baron is himself a poet – one of his poems is in the collection. He has been a member of a Keswick poetry workshop for 20 years and was the brains behind the Words by the Water festival which now brings thousands of people, and some of the world’s leading writers, to Keswick every year.

He fell in love with bats after moving with his wife Hetty to Loweswater in 1990 and was secretary of the Cumberland Bat Group for many years.

“It all began when we moved to Loweswater and the builder took the roof off and a whole load of bats flew out,” says Michael. “We became interested and took ourselves off on a course and joined the Cumberland Bat Group, which is flourishing.

“The bats are still in the building. They are pipistrelles. Last year we had 60 or so.” In deed Cumbria is a stronghold for bats with eight of the UK’s 17 species living here.

Michael began collecting bat poems more than 10 years ago.

“I always knew there was a famous poem by DH Lawrence which is a sort of love hate/poem,” he says. “Then I noticed one or two others. And over the years people have sent me a few. I just found more and more poems.

“The great majority have been written over the last 50 years. The interest by poets in bats seems to have coincided with the interest in conservation.”

Some poet friends of Michael’s wrote poems especially for the collection, and Cumbrian poets are well represented.

Bats, by Carlisle’s national award-winning poet Jacob Polley, is previously unpublished and there are contributions from Geraldine Green of Portinscale, Gill Nicholson of Ulverston and Christopher Pilling of Keswick.

“It’s difficult to say which is my favourite bat poem,” says Michael. “I think perhaps Richard Wilbur’s Mind, where he says mind is like a bat flying around, or Ted Hughes’s Karlsbad Caverns which is about some caves in Texas.

“And there are funny ones by Ogden Nash and Theodore Roethke. There’s a lot of good stuff.”

Michael hopes On a Bat’s Wing will help bat conservation. All 17 of the UK’s bat species have suffered severe declines over the past century, principally from habitat decline. Bats also suffer from pesticides and some deliberate human persecution.

In addition, this year, bats have suffered from the extremely wet weather which has led to a shortage of food, and the starvation of many baby bats.

“Bats are fascinating,” says Michael. “They are the only flying mammal in the world. They’ve been around for 50 thousand years.

“They hibernate for several months where they go into cold storage, and their pregnancy stops and then continues after hibernation. Some can live for 30 years. They are amazing creatures.

“And there’s still more to be found out about them. Our bats, for example, do not hibernate in our house, they go off somewhere else – but we don’t know where. Maybe there are some caves somewhere.”

But he adds: “Of course all that is in danger. I hope the book will raise awareness.”

For Cumbria Bat Line (free advice and help if you find a bat in distress) call 017687 76911.

Caitriona O'Reilly's A Lecture Upon the Bat has long been one of my favourite poems, and I was delighted to see it in this fine collection.

Percy Puddy