Cover artwork: detail from Midsummer Day
by Jenny Cowern
In The Art of Gardening, Mary Robinson explores her personal memories, the lives of other writers and her experiences of particular places. She begins with a childhood museum visit and ends with a sequence of poems prompted by The Poetics of Space by the French philosopher, Gaston Bachelard. In the title poem, the Czech writer Karel Čapek plants bulbs that will continue to flower in Prague long after his death. Alongside visits to the Scottish islands, Germany and Norway, there are poems in the voices of, among others, George Orwell on Jura, James Joyce’s publisher in Paris and a fifteenth-century master printer in Venice.
‘Words are precise, evocative; they mime the action and feeling. This is poetry that is detailed, delicate, apparently fragile but robust with treasured thoughts. [...] Mary’s finely honed, delicate poetic craft lies in uncovering memory: “I find a toy’s wheel, a coin, / I mend porcelain, sharpen blades / and in the garden dry seeds sprout.”’
Steve Matthews, Cumberland News, 21 May 2010
The Art of Gardening costs £7.50 and was published in April 2010.
ISBN: 978-1-906601-14-0
Mary Robinson grew up in Warwickshire and now lives in the north of England within sight of the Scottish hills. Her poetry has appeared in magazines and anthologies and she was shortlisted for the Templar Poetry Prize and the Cinnamon Press First Collection Award. She works as a literature tutor in adult and continuing education in Cumbria. This is her first collection.
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