Wild Flowers and Poetry
“We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about." - Charles Kingsley
"Be brave enough to live creatively. The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You can't get there by bus, only by hard work, risking, and by not quite knowing what you're doing. What you'll discover will be wonderful: Yourself." - Alan Alda
Suzanne Winn Landscape Artist
Suzanne Winn is a landscape artist based in Hampshire, England. This short film tells the story of how Suzanne paints expressively in oils to capture the energy and movement of the landscapes she loves.
The film also tells the story of why she paints the way she does, about her connection to the landscape and what it means to her.
Wild Flowers and Poetry
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was born in Massachusetts. In her lifetime, she was more well known as a gardener than a poet. She had a deep connection with nature, and she cultivated outdoor garden beds and exotic plants within a conservatory in her home.
At the age of 14, in a large album - herbarium - bound in green cloth, she painstakingly pressed, arranged, and labelled in her neat handwriting 424 wildflowers she had gathered from her native New England - some of them now endangered, some extinct.
The original herbarium still survives and is part of Harvard's Houghton Library collection. It is now too fragile for anyone to view, but a full-colour digital facsimile can be found on the Harvard Library website.
The flowers and plants that she grew provided a framework for her later poetic musings on life, death and relationships.
Her poems were unique for her era. They contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalisation and punctuation.
Emily lived much of her life in isolation. Considered an eccentric by locals, she developed a penchant for white clothing and was known for her reluctance to greet guests.
Emily never married, and most friendships between her and others depended entirely upon correspondence. She regularly enclosed poems in letters to friends.
So, although friends and family knew about her writing, it was not until after her death, when her younger sister discovered her large cache of poems (nearly 1,800) that her work became public. The first volume of her work was published posthumously in 1890.
Hope is the thing with feathers
Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all, And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm. I've heard it in the chillest land, And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me.
Two New Pocket Books
We have exciting news. We've just published our first two pocket books:
One of the author's most well-loved short stories, Beneath a Wishing Moon contemplates life around the salt-licked pavements of a seaside town under the heady influence of a powerful full moon.
Includes illustrations by the author.
AND
The author looks back to a childhood of bluer than blue skies, endless sunshine, and honeysuckle and roses growing profusely in the cottage gardens, and to her friendship with 'Ma Higham who shared a love of the natural realms.
Click on the book covers for more details.
Wishing you a wonderful day,
