Thorpeness

There is something richly circumstantial about Alison Brackenbury's poems: they are often rooted in a rural world, or in townscapes which sustain communities and preserve a strong sense of their history and what it gives them. Thorpeness has delicious surprises, among them 'Aunt Margaret's Pudding,' a rewarding culinary experience based on a black-covered handwritten notebook of recipes from Dorothy Eliza Barnes, 'Dot,' the poet's grandmother. 'When I knew Dot, she was a Lincolnshire shepherd's wife. But, as a young woman, she had been an Edwardian professional cook,' the poet explains, making her notebook a resource for the contemporary reader. The world of nature—birds, plants, weathers—comes alive in poem after poem, but there are also important poems of nurture. Brackenbury belongs in a long line of rural and provincial poets who bring England alive in forms and rhythms of renewal. She is a familiar radio voice, performing her won poems and narrating programmes she has scripted.

Alison Brackenbury was born in 1953, from a long line of domestic servants and farm workers. She won a scholarship to Oxford, where she studied English Literature. In 1977 she moved to Gloucestershire, where she worked in a technical library, then, for twenty-three years, in her husband's tiny metal finishing company. Since her retirement in 2012, she has given readings at many festivals and other poetry events. Alison's work has won an Eric Gregory and a Cholmondeley Award. Gallop, her Selected Poems, was published by Carcanet in 2019. Thorpeness is her eleventh collection.