I’m over the moon to tell you that my second collection, ‘How Time is in Fields‘ is now available to buy here.

‘How Time is in Fields’ explores the way place contains all times, as well as traces of our recognisable predecessors.   There’s a lot of walking in my book, indeed there’s been a lot of climbing stiles and gates and pigwire fences. (To still be able to climb a pigwire fence is my ambition for the next two decades). It’s a book full of paths and shared spaces – the spaces in which we co-exist with our own earlier lives, other lives, other creatures and other centuries. I divided the year into the Old English months, to reflect shifts of weather, folklore and state of mind.

I’ve been writing this collection over several years, but there are poems in it from as recently as last summer. The gorgeous painting on the front cover is by my friend Claire Scott, extraordinary artist of the Shropshire Hills. It’s called ‘Cropland’. I took one look at it, and knew it was the right one. It’s both rich and dark, the colour of all long ago summers, and the perspective is exactly what I saw in my head when I was writing ‘How we rode after haytiming’. You can visit Claire’s website here for more!

‘How Time is in Fields’ will be launched at Cheltenham Poetry Festival on 2 May at ‘Truth and Lies – Indigo Dreams Showcase’, where I’m immensely excited and fortunate to be sharing the main stage at the Cheltenham Playhouse with Paul McGrane, Nicola Jackson and Alyson Hallett. Tickets are available here.

Here’s the full cover. My warm thanks to David Morley and Elisabeth Sennitt Clough for their generous endorsements.