My collection of poems about Lancelot Brown will be coming out with Worple Press this summer, and I can’t wait!
It’s the result of years of fan-girling about the landscape gardener, visiting his gardens – and even visiting the one-time home of his wife, Bridget, in Boston Lincolnshire. Of course, so many poems have changed over this time, new ones have come as I’ve learnt more, and old ones have been discarded. Now though I feel it’s a collection I love, and I’m really excited to share it with you.
There will be events coming up which I’ll let you know about, or you can sign up to my monthly newsletter – Everyday Words. Maybe you’d like to invite me to visit your gardening group or event – I’d love that. In the meantime here are some things some lovely people have said, and a video of me reading one of the poems from the book.
PRAISE FOR THE HANDS OF A GARDENER:
‘…Bards yet unborn shall pay to Brown that tribute fitliest paid
In strains, the Beauty of his Scenes inspire.’
Rev. William Mason The English Garden – (a poem in 4 books 1777–81)
Lovers of landscape will relish this enthralling collection of poems. As predicted by Mason, Sarah Salway conjures up the enduring magic of Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown (1716-1783). Over 250 years later, his winding walks and rides still invite exploration. Threading ideas through contoured landscape garden vistas, Sarah evaluates what matters to society. Did Brown drain grazing ground to create expansive, sinuous ‘rivers’ merely to boast breath-taking reflections of Nature’s magnificence? Might he have also watered emerging buds of freedom for women – including his wife and daughters? Sarah’s storytelling engages with every touching detail. ‘The Hands of a Gardener’ helps us fathom how and why her genius muse, the ‘Great Leveller’, left such priceless ‘sense of place’.
Steffie Shields MBE
*
A Gardener’s Hands is a compellingly original lyrical tale of the life of Capability Brown and the spell he cast over fashionable society in the eighteenth century. This is part history and part imaginal ‘her story’ as Sarah Salway shares glimpses of the Brown landscape through the lens of his wife and his admirers. Brown’s life is deftly painted for all of our senses in each poem of this revealing, wry, occasionally mischievous and disquieting and always gently thought-provoking collection.
A carefully researched history of Lancelot Capability Brown’s life in a dance of poetic forms, word games and surprising scenes. Sarah Salway’s joy in the power of poetry and her well invested obsession with the prowess of Lancelot Capability Brown is contagious! I recommend a double read through at the first sitting followed by many dips into favourite poems that will make you gasp, laugh, or gaze longingly out at the horizon.
Marian Boswall, author of The Kindest Garden
*
‘From the very first poem, with its surprise of sensuality, we know Sarah Salway’s portrait of 18th Century English gardener and landscape architect, Lancelot Brown, will be an intimate one. In a collection that is as engaging as it is innovative, we are steered by Salway’s insight and reflection, gifting us a deeper understanding of one man, his family, his longings, his life’s work.’
Rebecca Goss, Poet