Dymock Dreams is composed for mezzo, flute, oboe and piano. It takes as its inspiration the paradoxes between city and nature inherent in John Drinkwater's poem Blackbird. The cycle was commissioned by the Gloucester Music Society with funds from the RV Williams Trust. It is inspired by the Dymock Poets (including John Drinkwater) who met in Gloucestershire just before the First World War. The four poems, Blackbird, Out of the Moon, The Plough and On a Lake, reflect John Drinkwater?s love of landscape, seasons and nature. Blackbird shows an awareness of nature manifest in a city setting. Out of the Moon draws on a number of Drinkwater?s preoccupations: the moon, the may-tree and deeper green are all presented as leitmotifs in his most famous poem Moonlit Apples. There is inherent in Out of the Moon a mournful obsession with the poet's connection to antiquity. In The Plough the central theme of Drinkwater and the Dymock Poets is explored through the question of immortality. The cycle of life and death resonates with the ever-returning plough to reconstitute the soil. The cycle finishes with On a Lake, which expresses how music can be inspired by nature.