Twelve Words for Moss

byElizabeth-Jane Burnett

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Glowflake, Rocket, Small Skies, Kind Spears, Marilyn . . .

Moss is known as the living carpet but if you look really closely, it contains an irrepressible light. In Twelve Words for Moss, Elizabeth-Jane Burnett highlights this often forgotten but vital foundation of the plant world with her unique blend of poetry, nature writing and memoir. Making her way through wetlands from Somerset to Country Tyrone, Burnett discovers the hidden vibrancy of these overlooked spaces, renaming her favourite species of moss as she recovers from grieving her father’s death, spurred on by the resilience and tenacity of her plant - and human - friends.

Twelve Words for Moss is a fascinating, subtle and risk-taking book; its remarkable opening pages in particular dis-orient and re-orient the reader, readying us for the forms of attention-giving to the overlooked and undersung world of mosses which the rest of the book beautifully practices. Poetry, descriptive-evocative prose, memory, memoir, natural history and more all drift and mingle in strikingly new ways in Burnett's book, down at the "boundary layer" where this ancient, modest life flourishes so generatively

Robert Macfarlane

About Elizabeth-Jane Burnett

Details
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • ISBN: 9780141999548
  • Length: 192 pages
  • Dimensions: 197mm x 11mm x 129mm
  • Weight: 146g
  • Price: £10.99
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