Recently I saw a picture on the Facebook page of artist Danielle Barlow called We Carry Our Grandmothers’ Ghosts, and it really struck home with me. I’m working on a poem, possibly one of a series about it. I only ever knew one of my grandmothers, because my father’s mother died of TB in 1938, when…
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Full marks if you can see any blue at all. There is enough to encourage me to have another go next year, but not much at all. Woad is very exciting, but complicated, and I think I did everything wrong. The leaves didn’t reach their full potential and were heavily depleted by slugs and caterpillars.…
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The Red, Yellow, Blue project is about collecting the colours of the territory of rain, and I have compiled a long list of plants found in the garden, or the roadsides, that I’d like to dye. This week it was this one: I am not making friends with this weed. For all the yards and…
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I was attracted to this book when I saw it in the V&A shop last summer by the low-key illustrations – the subtle colours, simple stitches, the neatness and regularity of her technique, and the care represented by the samples of sewing – there’s a gentle observant rhythm to them which is modest but not…
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Not quite so big on poetry this week, though the outlines of my ‘red yellow blue’ project are falling into place. The herb beds are getting cleared and rearranged so that plants have more room to spread themselves about. All the plants I have moved seem to be thriving and the violets have even thrown…
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