The soundtrack to Arcadia is rooted in a living, breathing and still-evolving anthology of writing about nature, curated and compiled by Deborah Warner from centuries’ worth of published material. Much of this writing is poetry, but the selection also includes prose, extracts from theatre works, even quotations from interviews.

Made especially for Factory International, this world premiere of Arcadia features more than 60 distinct works across the soundtrack, created by composer and sound designer Mel Mercier. A full list follows below. In addition to this catalogue of works, dozens more pieces of writing have either appeared in earlier versions of the soundtrack or have, in some way, informed or inspired its creation. These works are also listed below – and many may yet appear in future incarnations of Arcadia in towns and cities around the world.

Anonymous
Greek Proverb

Anonymous
No talking, No talking

Anonymous
Scottish Proverb

Anonymous, translated by Michelle Rocha
The Anniversary of a Friend Love

Anonymous, translated by Catrin Rogers
Medieval poem by a Monk of Ynys Enlli

Raymond Antrobus
Silence/Presence
© Raymond Antrobus.

Simon Armitage
Fugitives
© Simon Armitage.

Atticus
Promise Me…

Samuel Beckett
Molloy (extract)
© Samuel Beckett c/o The Samuel Beckett Estate.

John Clare
Prose extract
From John Clare by Himself, edited by Eric Robinson and David Powell, published by Carcanet Press, 1996.

Adelaide Crapsey
November Night

Adelaide Crapsey
Triad

Emily Dickinson
The Sky is low—the Clouds are mean
Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them, edited by Cristanne Miller. © 2016 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. © 1998 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. © 1951, 1955 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. © Renewed 1979, 1983, by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. © 1914, 1918, 1919, 1924, 1929, 1930, 1932, 1935, 1937, 1942 by Martha Dickinson Bianchi. © 1952, 1957, 1958, 1963, 1965 by Mary L Hampson.

HD
Oread
From Collected Poems, 1912-1944, © 1914 by Hilda Doolittle.

TS Eliot
The Waste Land (extract)

Ian Hamilton Finlay
Estuary
Courtesy of the Estate of Ian Hamilton Finlay.

Stephen Graham
The Gentle Art of Tramping (extract)
© Stephen Graham, 1926, The Gentle Art of Tramping, Bloomsbury Publishing.

Robert Graves
She Tells Her Love
Used by kind permission of Carcanet Press.

Seamus Heaney
Postscript

Miroslav Holub, translated by Ewald Osers
Death of a sparrow
From Poems Before & After: Collected English Translations, by Miroslav Holub, translated by Ewald Osers et al (Bloodaxe Books, 2006).

Gerard Manley Hopkins
Inversnaid
Reproduced with permission of the licensor through PLSclear.

AE Housman
Into my heart an air that kills

Ted Hughes
Glimpse

Ted Hughes
Interview quote
From Wild Steelhead & Salmon magazine.

Ted Hughes
What Is the Truth? (extract)

Philip Larkin
The Trees

DH Lawrence
Old Song
The Cambridge Edition of the Works of DH Lawrence: The Poems 2013 © The Estate of Frieda Lawrence Ravagli & Cambridge University Press.

Peter Levi
Alciac
© The Estate of Peter Levi (1960). Reproduced with permission of Johnson & Alcock Ltd.

Helen Macdonald
Prose extract

Sabrina Mahfouz
If I Were a Rose
From Poems for a Green and Blue Planet © Sabrina Mahfouz, granted with permission of Lewinsohn Literary Ltd.

Sabrina Mahfouz
I Am / I Say
From Poems for a Green and Blue Planet © Sabrina Mahfouz, granted with permission of Lewinsohn Literary Ltd.

Charlotte Mew
I so liked Spring

Máire Mhac an tSaoi, translated by Iarla Ó Lionáird
Blath an aitinn
Published with permission from Cló Iar-Chonnacht, An Spidéal, Co. na Gaillimhe, Ireland. © Cló Iar-Chonnacht 2021.

AA Milne
From Winnie-the-Pooh (extracts)

David Mitchell
Black Swan Green (extract)
Reproduced by permission of Sceptre, an imprint of Hodder & Stoughton, a Hachette UK Company.

John Muir
Prose extract
From The John Muir Papers, Holt-Atherton Special Collections & Archives, University of the Pacific Library. © 1984 Muir-Hanna Trust.

Harold Munro
Overheard on a Saltmarsh

Kishwar Naheed, translated by Kishwar Ahmad
The Grass is Really Like Me

Alice Oswald
Dart (extract)
© Alice Oswald

Alice Oswald
A Sleepwalk on the Severn (extract)
© Alice Oswald

Alice Oswald
Yellow Iris
© Alice Oswald

GE Patterson
The Natural World

Sylvia Plath
The Bell Jar (extract)

Ezra Pound
In a Station of the Metro
From Personae, © 1926 by Ezra Pound. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing.

William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (extract)

William Shakespeare
The Tempest (extract)

Evie Shockley
highly visible rural winter image
From 31 words * prose poems. Previously published in Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, edited by Camille Dungy.

Nan Shepherd
Prose extract
From The Living Mountain: A Celebration of the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland. © Nan Shepherd, 1977. Reproduced on behalf of Canongate Books Ltd.

Stevie Smith
Alone in the Woods

Sara Teasdale
February Twilight

Sara Teasdale
There Will Come Soft Rains

Edward Thomas
Adlestrop

Edward Thomas
Digging

Edward Thomas
Rain

Greta Thunberg
Prose extract
From No One is Too Small to Make a Difference, published by Penguin Books.

Mark Twain
Quotation

William Carlos Williams
The Red Wheelbarrow
From The Collected Poems: Volume 1, 1909-1939, © 1938 by Directions Publishing Corp. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing.

Virginia Woolf
Prose extract
From The Waves. Courtesy of the Society of Authors as the Literary Representative of the Estate of Virginia Woolf.

Dorothy Wordsworth
Diary extract

William Wordsworth
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

William Wordsworth
The Prelude

WB Yeats
The Lake Isle of Innisfree

WB Yeats
The Song of Wandering Aengus

Anonymous, translated by John Gallas
I can hear his flute

Anonymous, translated by John Gallas
I Wish…

Anonymous, translated by John Rocha (English) and Michelle Rocha (Mandarin)
Arcadian

Simon Armitage
Snow
© Simon Armitage

Matthew Arnold
Dover Beach

Elizabeth Bishop
Little Exercise

William Blake
The Sick Rose

Emily Brönte
It Was Night

Malcolm de Chazal, translated by John Gallas
It was so Hot

John Clare
Prose extract
From The Later Poems of John Clare, Vols I & II.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Frost at Midnight (extract)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Prose extract
From The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Prose extract

Frances Darwin Cornford
To a Lady Seen from the Train
Reproduced with the permission of the trustees of the Frances Crofts Cornford Will Trust.

Imtiaz Dharker
Crab-apples
From I Speak for the Devil (Bloodaxe Books, 2001).

Emily Dickinson
A Light exists in Spring
Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them, edited by Cristanne Miller. © 2016 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. © 1998 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. © 1951, 1955 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. © Renewed 1979, 1983, by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. © 1914, 1918, 1919, 1924, 1929, 1930, 1932, 1935, 1937, 1942 by Martha Dickinson Bianchi. © 1952, 1957, 1958, 1963, 1965 by Mary L Hampson.

Emily Dickinson
There came a Wind like a Bugle
Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them, edited by Cristanne Miller. © 2016 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. © 1998 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. © 1951, 1955 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. © Renewed 1979, 1983, by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. © 1914, 1918, 1919, 1924, 1929, 1930, 1932, 1935, 1937, 1942 by Martha Dickinson Bianchi. © 1952, 1957, 1958, 1963, 1965 by Mary L Hampson.

Nick Drake
The Future
From Out of Range (Bloodaxe Books, 2018).

Gretel Ehrlich
Prose extract
From Islands, the Universe, Home. Originally published in Harper's Magazine and collected in volume by Viking Penguin, an imprint of Penguin Books.

Robert Frost
Dust of Snow

Robert Frost
Nothing Gold Can Stay

Michael Hartnett
An Muince Dreoiliní

Hannah Hauxwell
Prose extract
From A Winter Too Many

Gerard Manley Hopkins
The Windhover
Reproduced with permission of the licensor through PLSclear.

Ted Hughes
Full Moon and Little Frieda

Ted Hughes
Prose extract
From Letters of Ted Hughes

Ted Hughes
The Shell

James Joyce
Prose extract
From ‘The Dead’, in Dubliners

James Joyce
Prose extract
From Ulysses

Jackie Kay
Holy Island
© Jackie Kay, 2011.

Omar Khayyam, translated by Edward Fitzgerald
The Rubaiyat (extract)

Norman MacCaig
A Good Day
From The Poems of Norman MacCaig (Birlinn Ltd). Reproduced with permission of the Licensor through PLSclear.

Robert Macfarlane
Prose extract
From The Wild Places © 2007.

Christopher Marlowe
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

WS Merwin
Trees

Edvard Munch
Prose extract
From The Journals of Edvard Munch.

Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, translated by Paul Muldoon
Ceist na Teangan

Seán Ó Ríordáin, translated by Peter Sirr
Ní Ceadmhach Neamhshuim

Marcel Proust
The Guermantes Way (extract)

Roger Robinson
A Portable Paradise
From A Portable Paradise (Peepal Tree Press, 2019) © Roger Robinson, reproduced by permission of Peepal Tree Press.

Sappho, translated by Mary Barnard
Fragment 47

Sappho, translated by Anne Carson
Fragment 47
First published in If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho by Alfred A Knopf © 2002. Reprinted by permission of Anne Carson & Aragi Inc. All rights reserved.

Wislava Szymborska, translated by Clare Cavanaugh
Consolation

Edward Thomas
The Cherry Trees

Edward Thomas
Lights Out

Greta Thunberg
Prose extract
From The Guardian, © Guardian News & Media Ltd 2021.

Greta Thunberg
Extracts from various speeches

Anthony Walton
Carrion
First published in Ecotone.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Prose extract
From Philosophical Investigations.

Virginia Woolf
Prose extract
From Night and Day. Courtesy of the Society of Authors as the Literary Representative of the Estate of Virginia Woolf.

Richard Wright
Haiku #459

Richard Wright
Haiku #543

WB Yeats
Diary extract