Worcester poet Suz Winspear has a new collection coming out!
‘Picking Blackberries in a Plague Year’ will be launched on July 24th. Many of the poems were written during the enforced coronavirus lockdown of 2020 and explore the reconnection with the natural world that many of us experienced during the time when ‘the foxes owned the streets’. She reflects on gardening, ‘the ephemeral art of living things, / the art in time that changes, thrives and dies’ in her tiny city centre garden, and draws consolation from the indifference of the natural world towards human disaster, for ‘Even in a plague year, there are blackberries’. Towards the end of the collection, we are offered hope that the travails of the plague years might lead to some sort of renewal: ‘what treasure might arise in aftermath, / when we’ll welcome in a better / and a wiser generation?’
The book launch will take place on Sunday July 24th at 4pm at the Hive in Worcester. This is a free event, and everybody is welcome!