Delighted to share my poem about a Black actress in the 18th century who played Juliet. The poem's written in solidarity with the actress Francesca Amewudah-Rivers who's faced such online abuse. RTs appreciated.

mail.culturematters.org.uk/index.php/arts…

Many thanks to the very kind Stephen Sparks of Point Reyes Books for the gift of the book I’d been loudly coveting on here! 🙏🏻

Blessed my feet (& socks & shoes) with a baptism in dew this morning. Yes, the dew has faerie properties. The scent of the vetch-filled long grass along the base of the hill was a marvel in itself.

How many times have I paused just here, with the lush long flower-peppered grass & this kind of almost-sunrise light? It’s the most precious thing.

Eight p.m., the robin is still singing & everywhere smells like jasmine.

My skin keeps the storm inside

April really is the cruellest month if you work on a US academic calendar. Wildly busy time of year in the office & outside it’s beckoning you as shamelessly as this.

Daydreaming an alternative life where I just spend the spring & summer travelling around the UK (by means of what we used to call “trains”) going to extremely cool literary/nature festivals where all my twittering friends are.

SIGH

Lovely synchronicity: Liz Berry’s book arrived at the weekend & here she is this morning (with her small boys, who are probably at university by now) on my relisten to The Stubborn Light of Things, aka therapy. (Also: TADPOLES!!) melissaharrison.co.uk/podcast/the-st…

Not yet reached by the sun, the last of the tadpoles are still sleeping with their snouts in the mud. Below in the canyon I can hear full-fledged frogs.

A wee chunk of pagan heaven here as the golden sun clears the mountaintop behind me.

It’s back, it’s back, my special April pilgrimage friendthe wild red columbine

Out on the soft hills now, imbibing gentleness before whatever ungentleness the day brings.

Best of 2023 for Vanity Fair and the Atlanta Journal Constitution, winner of the Willie Morris Prize for Southern Fiction, and now the unanimous winner of the Thomas Wolfe Literary Award. If you haven’t read Those We Thought We Knew, I hope you will.

I completely missed #SmallBeautiesHour today but I’d intended to share the lovely, promising density of flowers on the Pacific brambles in the hill meadow yesterday. Sweet in themselves and also a promise of abundant native blackberries in the late summer sun.

I don’t often “love” advertising & couldn’t actually give a hoot about the brand, but the message here is fabulous. Not everyone is or needs to be a Tall Poppy, but if you are — especially as a girl or woman — ffs don’t try to shrink down to fit. We need to tell our girls this.

Absolute U2nit

The Museum of English Rural Life

That damn Bono’s been around bothering the cattle again