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.