Weeds and Wild Flowers

Alice Oswald is one of my favourite poets. Ever since I heard her interviewed on Woman's Hour on Radio 4 a few years ago I have been hooked. She was talking about her poem 'Dart' which charts the stories of the people who live and work on this river near to her home in Devon. Since then I've bought all of her collections and I've just picked up a copy of 'Weeds and Wild Flowers' which also contains these detailed etchings by Jessica Greenman.

I do not have the mastery of the language that Alice Oswald possesses so here are her own words to describe this book :

'Weeds and Wild Flowers', which grew out of a number of conversations with Jessica Greenman, is not an illustrated book. It is two separate books, a book of etchings and a book of poems, shuffled together. What connects them both is their contention that flowers are recognisably ourselves elsewhere; but whereas the etchings express that thought dynamically in the postures of the pictures, the poems make fun of it, using the names of flowers to summon up the flora of the psyche. My hope is that the experience of reading and looking at the book will be a slightly unsettling pleasure, like walking through a garden at night, when the plants come right up to the edges of their names and then beyond them. It is not, for that reason, a reliable guide to wild flowers, though it may be a reliable record of someone's wild or wayside selves'.

I love the thought of plants ' coming right up to the edges of their names...' and this book is a delight to read. Not always easy but worth the trouble. If you've never read Alice Oswald before you've missed a treat. Try her collection 'Dart' or 'The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile'. I promise she won't disappoint.