Twelve Words for Moss

by Elizabeth-Jane Burnett

Moss is known as the living carpet but if you look really closely, it contains an irrepressible light.
In Twelve Words for Moss, Elizabeth-Jane Burnett celebrates the unsung hero of the plant world with her unique blend of poetry, nature writing and memoir. Making her way through wetlands from Somerset to Country Tyrone, Burnett discovers the hidden vibrancy of these overlooked spaces, renaming her favourite species of moss as she recovers from her grief at her father's death and draws inspiration from the resilience and tenacity of her plant - and human - friends.

Genres: Nature, Nonfiction, Poetry, Memoir, Plants, Environment

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2023

About the author

Elizabeth-Jane Burnett is an author and academic whose creative and critical work has a largely environmental focus. Publications include the poetry collections Of Sea (2021) and Swims (2017), both from Penned in the Margins; nature writing memoir The Grassling (Penguin, 2019) and monograph A Social Biography of Contemporary Innovative Poetry Communities: The Gift, the Wager and Poethics (Palgrave, 2017). She is a Leverhulme Research Fellow (2021-2), researching ‘Creative Writing and Climate Change: Developing a New Wetlands Literature,’ a nature diarist for Oh magazine and the Guardian, founder of Grow Your Own Creativity and Associate Professor in Creative Writing at Northumbria University.

Reviews

[Fern A · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was not the book I was quite expecting to read. Before beginning at the beginning I expected it to be a sort of moss encyclopaedia and fairly factual in its approach. The reality however was far from this. Elizabeth-Jane Burnett has written in essence a poetical ode to moss, combining her personal life with the existence of the plants. At first I wasn’t too sure how this would work but it links surprisingly well, after all all people share lived experiences and yet we are all different too, not so completely unlike moss. A uniquely written book.

[Megan Rhiannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

beautiful descriptions of peatlands and mosses 10/10

[MrKillick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ahh, dieses Buch! Sicherlich das bewegendste, tiefste, persönlichste, einfach nur schönste Buch seit - ja seit wann? Es hat mich auf so vielen Ebenen angesprochen.
Die Autorin trauert um ihren Vater. Im Laufe eines Jahres (?) reist sie durch England, besucht Moore, Sümpfe, Wälder und betrachtet, nein, vertieft sich, verliert sich und findet sich in der Betrachtung von Moosen. In diesen unscheinbaren Pflanzen findet sie Trost, Halt und Vorbild für ein Leben nach Verlust und Begrenzung.

Ich habe dieses Buch letzten Sommer per Zufall im Edinburgh gefunden, es hätte kein passenderer Fund seien können. Auch ich habe meinen Vater vor drei Jahren verloren - ich vermisse ihn immer noch. Dann das Hauptmotiv des Buches, die Moose. In meinem Studium habe ich mich viel mit Moosen beschäftigt, habe meine Diplomarbeit über Moose geschrieben. Alles was die Autorin über Moose sagt ist absolut präzise und korrekt, ich kenne fast alle Moose, die sie beschreibt. Alles ist gleichzeitig wissenschaftlich korrekt und unglaublich poetisch. Dann hat die Autorin mütterlicherseits kenjanische Wurzeln, ihre Familie stammt aus der Gegend des Mount Kenya. Dort war ich vor vielen Jahren, kann ihrer Beschreibung von Orten und Landschaften genau nachvollziehen.

Und dann ihre Sprache! Das Buch ist eine Mischung aus erzählenden Passagen und kurzen Gedichten. Alles, ob Prosa oder Gedicht, hat einen unglaublichen Rhythmus, einen Groove, die Autorin arbeitet viel mit Alliterationen und Binnenreimen - im Deutschen würde es unsäglich peinlich klingen, aber hier passt es einfach.

Der Kreis der Liebhaber dieses Buches dürfte klein sein, wer kann sich schon etwas unter Rhytidiadelphus sqarrosus oder Schistostega pennata vorstellen. Wer aber Naturpoesie und Naturkunde von allerhöchster Qualität zu schätzen weiß findet hier ein absolutes Kleinod!
10 von 5 möglichen Punkten

[Gabriel Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

*3.5

There’s a lot of really good stuff in this! The passages about peat bogs and the temporality of various plants I found super interesting. Some of the poetry is really beautiful also, but I feel like it’s best moments were within its non-fiction prose. One thing which was so great about these sections were their geography, and Burnett’s process of research by travel around Britain achieves the feeling of interconnectedness which seems to be one of her main goals. For some reason the description of dawn on p152 really chimed with me: ‘I thought that I was dead but it was only a kind of blindness. I thought that I was dead but it was only a kindness that had retreated and needed coaxing out’.

The book kind of lost me in its more anthropocentric aspects, and does fall into the tropes which I dislike about Romantic poetry more generally, i.e. gawking at nature; acting at home within it and then taking it and yourself back into human society - it makes nature and its non-human life all feel a bit secondary. I can’t help but feel that each time she describes herself being utterly subsumed in wilderness as a bit disingenuous, as she then leaves it behind and returns to her heated home and laptop to write about it. It does feel like taking what one wants from nature - its aesthetic beauty particularly - and having its main aspect be how it can be theorised and used in the human experience. It kind of affords it only a human purpose in that way which I disliked. For me this also results in a rosy view of the natural world as an entirely benevolent entity to be used as a tool in human growth which feels a bit simplistic. I actually would’ve liked it to be a bit more about moss tbh. Nonetheless I think it’s defo worth reading for all its attributes and flaws.

[William Rogers-Coltman]

Was really trying to get into this book and was struggling and then it ended.

I wanted it to change the way I see moss (like the Overstory does with trees). However, it feels so subjective, so much about her unique intimate relationship with moss, that I felt somewhat alienated amongst the dreamy poetic stuff. It felt more like an exhibition than an invitation. Maybe I am wrong on that I don't chuffing know.

Also the rhyming is pretty dense and relentless throughout, which I found exhausting by the end: 'apple mint, little glint, twisting all among the chintz - flecked with cream and churns of green'.

I liked the strange structure and actually haven't read anything else like it so that was cool. I have always got time for Peat Bogs so enjoyed that as well. 🌴🌲🌳

[Ailsa Muir · Rating 1 out of 5]

dont get me started

[Katy Wheatley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Burnett is primarily a poet and in this book she weaves a blend of poetry and prose to create a memoir that is also a record of grief and a meditation on nature. For a slender volume, this book does some serious heavy lifting. For me, the poetry side of things was the most successful. Burnett's carefully observed rumination on the mosses she discovers in the cracks and crevices of her life have a touch of the flights of rapture of Gerard Manley Hopkins and a melodic, lilting beauty that impel you to go out and look for yourself at what she describes.

[Ruth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting form, enjoyed the prose very much. I’m put off by the yoga and this concept of lying in moss and then taking bits home. It seems a very self important thing to do, when the author is clearly trying to make the mosses the stars, as though the purpose of moss is to tend to our needs. Maybe I’m just getting a little tired of this genre of ‘nature the healer of humans’.

[Katrina Clarke · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the poetry, found it quite joyful and fun. Also, the unexpected rhyming within sections of prose. The memoir parts, where the writer (literally) immerses herself in mosses didn't quite work for me.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sedate & poetic, this is a strange book the nature parts are interesting and illuminating and the poems are fine its the memoir tangents the narrative goes off on spoiled it for me.

Its was interesting to read about this plant in all its different forms but i wanted more moss less memoir.

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing book about coping with the loss of her father, the author uses the search for mosses, their place in the natural world, as her vehicle to recovery. A beautiful book of poems and poetic prose.

[Helen (Helena/Nell) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very strange book. I knew and liked some of the author's previous work as a poet, and I have an interest in wild plants. I wanted to know what she would have to say about moss. I wanted to learn more about moss. I thought the book would be about moss.

It certainly has a lot of moss in it. But moss is weird. It's been around forever and seems to harken back to the stage when seaweed had just about made it onto the land. Elizabeth-Jane Burnett spends a lot of time here in bogs with sphagnum mosses. But the further I got into the book, the more convinced I became that a) there was a lot of different kinds of moss about and b) that the author's relationship with it was pretty mystical, but the less clear I became about what she was actually saying.

However, I did learn about moss as I went on, though mainly not from the author. Each moss she mentions appears in a poem on its own page, titled with her own name for it, subtitled with its Latin name. These poems have their own (smaller) typeface and follow various shapes and forms. Generally they don't rhyme. I learned about each moss from googling its Latin name and finding some images (so I could try to visualise what she was talking about) and/or an information page from one of the 'bryological' sources ('bryology', as I now know well, being the branch of botany that deals with mosses).

Was this frustrating? Yes, to some extent, though largely because I wasn't looking for the right thing. The back jacket doesn't actually say the book is about moss. It says she treads her way through wetlands "threading her way through grief". It says the book "thrums with loss -- and is scattered with poems about moss." All true.

I did learn a good bit about the author, and I found much of that interesting, if odd. Her mother's background and her own early memories of Kenya were most interesting. Her intensely empathetic feelings towards moss were harder for me to relate to. Her magnetic attraction to waterways and bogs? Hm. Her grief over her father's death, fine. The moss poems I could live without.

Many poets these days write prose poems. This poet writes a prose memoir that uses, on its prose pages, an unusual amount of poetic techniques. Masses of alliteration, assonance, abstraction, intense metaphor. Lots of present tense narrative, including many 'I think' observations (poets always want you know what they're thinking). But perhaps her extensive rhyme (which I note one GoodReads reviewer describes as 'relentless') is the most unexpected prose feature, and it seems to increase as she goes on. Sometimes it works quite pleasingly, especially when winding up a point ("There are gaps in the record where we don't know what grows. There are gaps in the explored where nobody goes." Ch.4, p. 62). In other places, as further down the same, I found it painful ("In such a space, mosses might grow and fledgling feelings flow - sprinklings of joy that, elsewhere, might be shouted down, can here find quieter ground.") I'm just not sure about "sprinklings of joy" either. Sometimes I did find the choice of words bordering on flowery (in a negative sense).

It is clear that the author knows a lot about moss. No question about her level of expertise. But she often uses botanical language without explaining it, or certainly without explaining it at point of first usage, and I'm not sure this is helpful, though I figure it's a thing that poets also do. Make the reader work!

One book she footnotes a couple of times is Robin Wall Kimmerer's Gathering Moss. This book is also a kind of memoir, or certainly more than another bit of botany. But Kimmerer does explain things for those new to moss. Early on, for example: "A true moss or bryophyte is the most primitive of land plants. Mosses are often described by what they lack, in comparison to the more familiar higher plants. They lack flowers, fruits and seeds and have no roots. They have no vascular system, no xylem and phloem to conduct water internally. They are the most simple of plants, and in their simplicity, elegant."

Elizabeth Jane Burnett knows all this and more. But when she starts to put it into poetical language, somehow it's really hard to process. I need the Kimmerer introduction to be able to 'get' the Burnett poetical description, viz:
"As the mosses soak up rain they fill with green, like a light coming on. There is a charge, channelling through the leaves [ ...]. Seen under its [microscope] lens, a moss leaf becomes an ethereal, underwater creature, with the long writhe of itself channelling endlessly, rhythmically, luminous. While most of the other plants show intricacy of colour, tone and shape, the Sphagnum is elegantly simple. Its cells are blank -- just spaces for water to fill."

Burnett can write in nature guide language. Every now and again there's a straightforward piece and it comes (to me) as a relief. But you know it's not what she really wants to do.

When I got to the end, I wondered what the twelve words for moss (as in the title) actually were. I guess it's obvious when you go back and look. There are twelve chapters and each one is just one word, so these must be the twelve. But most (not all) of these twelve chapter words are also Burnett's names for mosses she particularly likes: eg Glowflake, Brilliant, Flamambulist, Little Peach, Dawn. These words are also poem titles (because there is a poem for each moss). But there are well over thirty poems, and so doesn't that mean she has well over thirty words for moss?

I suspect the title is designed to sell the book and place it neatly into the nature memoir category. But really it's a piece of poet's making, and poets do their own thing in their own way and on their own terms. It's not like anything else I've ever read. I don't want to read it again. It's not quite prose and it's not quite poetry (neither good words in the best order, nor the best words in the best order). But an interesting experiment, yes, and also authentic: something she needed to write.

[Josie Glausiusz · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love moss. I really do. I would happily read a book about the biology of moss, its early antecedents, for example: mosses evolved more than 400 million years ago and share many features with the first plants to have emerged on land.

This book is not that. I'm not sure what the book is, exactly. Mostly, it's a stream of consciousness about moss and loss. Most of the time, I am not sure what the author is talking about, or where she is. I didn't learn much about moss botany, either.

I did learn - twice - that moss is sometimes used, in some cultures, in place of menstrual pads.

Thank you for that information!

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

really gorgeous and affirming. the author definitely succeeds in the mission of giving back to the moss by raising awareness of its use and beauty and power. pleasant prose and lyricism and wonderful imagery and sensation.

[Elsbeth Kwant]

Read on the recommendation of Robert Macfarlane, who is to be trusted in these matters. To me it was an enriching and exasperating read. 12 words for moss is an exploration of moss and self, with some etymology and literature, memoir and womanhood thrown in. I am Dutch, so having to make a triple translation for self-named mosses (frequently referencing an area of popular culture I am not very much at home in), through the Latin to the Dutch was sometimes hard. The obvious knowledge Burnett has of mosses shines tantalizingly through, but is not there for the reading - I would not mind reading an article on that alone (really, originally sea-born seed dispersion?). The stories about her Kikuyu Kenian heritage were beautiful, and relatable. I enjoyed the interleaving of Devon and Kenia: Sparrowhawks are not unusual visitors to our Devon garden but still more frequent are kestrels and, our favourite, Shamba Rafiki – garden friend, a tawny owl.

Then there was an aspect of femininity that feels alien to me - I do not seek that type of sisterhood that seems to exist in femininity alone. This is a female text, very different from a Ghost in My Throat, which I really liked (though I related to the comment on feminine voices in the cathedral).

I'd like to see this some time: "By a profusion of Polytrichum commune, Common Haircap, I think of its changeling nature under a microscope – how it is one thing in the light and another in the lens. In the daylight: a clump of green, with rough stalks. An interesting shape, spikily sculptural but not extraordinary. Under the lens, it is on fire. Covered in glitter. Embers spark and scatter across its metamorphosing form."

Memory takes loosening rather than tightening – is something to drift into, not skewer. In other ways, it is its echo.

As I walk, an orange, waning moon over moor gathers me gently and thaws the tight muscles of mourning.

If our homes have been burned and moved on, if our homes have been buried and blown, there is bold work of the spirit to do, in the conjuring of something new.

[Neep · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can't help feeling that I would've liked this book better if I knew the first thing about moss. The intricate descriptions of them just washed straight over me and I found my mind wandering a lot whilst reading. The poetry didn't draw me back in to the work like I hoped it would - in truth I mistakenly thought this was a book of poetry, so that's on me. It's more of a nature memoir that finds itself carried away in flights of fancy - between the poems, we find our narrator interviewing people who do moss-related jobs for a living like we're a serious science book before pages later finding her trying to listen to moss, convinced it produces music; stuffing moss into her shoes for some reason and then feeling guilty for stuffing moss into her shoes for, again, some reason. I clearly don't have the soul of a poet because this seemed like a lot of pretentiousness. The stuff about moss being good for fighting global warming was at least interesting, though.

I liked the sections where the author talks about loss and juggling grief and sadness. When she really digs down into her grief for her father it's heart-breaking at times, and beautiful too. The parts about familial roots and being able to trace her lineage back into the local area in England and her summers spent with her mother's side of the family in Africa were interesting also.

It's very lyrical prose that just could not be more unrelatable because it's about moss. We then sprinkle weird archaic-sounding poetry passages throughout about moss. Like she's literally waxing lyrical about moss, actual moss. Borderline love poems to moss. Which, obviously the title does say that it's about moss but I didn't actually know that anyone could write an entire book about moss, outside of being an actual science book about moss. This read has been an eye opening experience, that's for sure.

[Shari · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this beautiful book--the subject matter, the writing, the structure, and the personal insights.

The author is grieving the loss of her father and finds hope in the way moss grows, thrives, and survives, even under harsh conditions. She finds comfort in her pursuit of knowledge about mosses. She revels in the times she can spend in the natural world, but since she is forced to be in a city for work much of the time, she is able to look for and observe the mosses growing in the urban environment she inhabits. She says that in times of grief or other hard times, a friend found it helpful to focus on small details to "block out the bigger picture." For her, mosses serve this purpose as well as providing a focal point from which she can explore various other aspects of her life and history, as well as that of her ancestors. She finds connections with her mother's experiences growing up in Kenya, for example.

The book is written/structured in an interesting and very effective way. There are short poems about specific kinds of mosses, but also prose sections. Nestled within these sections are rhyming sentences that form mini-poems within the prose.

Being a fan of moss myself, I enjoyed reading about it and how it grows. I will have even more respect for it now that I have read this book. Beyond that, this is jsimply a lovely book to read. The descriptions of the moss, the insights the author gains through her close observations, the gorgeous writing, the mini-poems within the prose, and the foundation of hope the author finds--each strand weaves together into a whole cloth that is full of colour, vibrancy, and beauty.

I received a digital copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a review. I thank them, the publisher, and the author.

[Juliano · Rating 4 out of 5]

“In the darkness, mosses show us how to hold the light.” I always cherish reading new work from Elizabeth-Jane Burnett, from her poetry collections to her memoir The Grassling; in her latest work, Twelve Words For Moss, Burnett blends poetry and prose to unfold a story about grief, lineage, and eternity. Using moss and all its meanings, uses, associations to explore more personal ideas around the death of her father, her grandmother’s roots in Embu, and finding love in the wake of loss. “If touched they will warm / if blushed they will form / a circuit of light in the bark / to lead you with leaves / in shimmering wreaths / small halos that burn in the dark. / *In the rush of the ground letting go / all that’s buried inside of its loam / there are altars of light where the old mosses glow.*” Her work is full of these pockets of joy, her writing reverberating with genuine love and wonder for the world around us, for the people in it, and for the great work of the writer. “Wherever there is light I gratefully choose it and where there is moss there will always be music. For moss is the light of the earth and when it grows inside it cannot be hidden but courses through the limp stitching of the body. You may have closed yourself off and been bound up tight, hovering unbearably on the brink of the night, yet, do not lose heart. There is growing in you a family of light, scattered, yet connected, a symphony of brightness plays its ghost-notes through the blood you thought you had lost — that is moss, growing on your gleaming bones, threading the song of you into the stones, flooding the spires of your tapering homes — that is moss and not loss that shapes you.” A vital, moving read.

[Sofia Kyriaki Kouloufakou · Rating 3 out of 5]

Honestly, when I first heard of this book, I had the impression that it would be just a poetry collection, something that was far from that. It was part-poetry, part-narration, part-scientific.

Our MC after having lost her father, tries to come to terms with her grief, while reminding and presenting us some scenes of her childhood, with an absolutely lyrical way. It just screams cottagecore (which I loved about it) and it can surely set the mood, making you believe that you are a Studio Ghibli protagonist (for which goal I alwys strive).

Another interesting thing was, that all essays of this, all of the poems, each chapter was interwoven with each other. Apart from the biological information mentioned in the book, the us of the metaphors is fenomenal. And it reminds us how the urban world and the natural world are connected, with no borders whatsoever.

Thank you Penguin Random House for senidng an ARC to me, and thank you NetGalley for the acceptance of said request in exchange for an honest review!

[K.C. Norton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this book was going to be just a poetry collection, but it also includes a sort of essay collection on moss thoughts (or maybe one long essay broken down into little parts). This was the ecologically-minded cottagecore book I didn't know I needed, and once I figure out how to get my hands on a print copy, I'm going to give one to a friend. One sad note: it appears to be primarily a UK publication? I read it through NetGalley, so I'm not sure if or when it'll be more widely available in the US.

All of the poems and essays are interconnected, not just around the topic of moss, but around themes of loss and reclamation, biology and ecology, nature and industry, and the consideration of biomes. It's part memoir, part love letter, part reminder that the divide between the natural world and the industrialized world is permeable. Also, she makes friends with moss. It's charming.

[Kathryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mini review for now: It’s part science, part poetry, part grief song: an ode to moss and all the ways it teaches us how to hold stillness, remember, and grow in shadow. I loved how it weaves gentle facts about these small, unassuming plants and how they shape the planet’s carbon story, while also using moss as a metaphor for loss and not just the ache of it, but the strange, tender gains that come with it. That it’s okay to sit in the dark for a while, but also to trust that the light will call. And just like moss, we’ll find a way to root in unexpected places, to soften hard things, and to keep going even when no one is watching.

[Tea Leaves and Reads · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Twelve Words for Moss, Elizabeth-Jane Burnett celebrates the unsung hero of the plant world with a unique blend of poetry, nature writing and memoir. Making her way through wetlands from Somerset to County Tyrone, Burnett discovers the hidden vibrancy and luminous beauty of these overlooked places. For those that enjoy lyrical books that stray from the norm, the double meanings and the importance of poetry, this would be a great choice for you.

[Fraser Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't know what to expect with this book. First of all, it is beautifully written. It is part nature, part poetry, part, memoir, and part eulogy on the nature of death, but that is also its biggest flaw that it isn't anyone of those things entirely. There are poems that disrupt the narrative. There is prose that rhymes like poetry and there is a lot of repetition. This could have been a masterpiece, instead it's a muddle of ideas that in my opinion just don't work. 2.75/5 (rounded up).

[karla JR · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book that explore the grief and I find the poetry on it not my cuppa of tea. Is more a prose and a ode to moss, not what I was expecting to read from the title. Isn’t a bad book is just probably not my time to enjoy it. Is not bad written is not bad created and I think if you into poetry this may be something you really enjoy because some of the poems on there as such a delight to read

[Bethia Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not my cup of tea at all, and I did read the description! As a work of poetry I can see that it would have merit, but I thought it would be a blend of science, botanical facts and natural history brought together with the more artistic, however it really was just the latter.
That said, I would not be able to write the equivalent and have great admiration for the creator in that respect alone.

[Stevie Harlem · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely beautiful poems and writing about connection with nature, your feelings and family. Would make a beautiful gift for someone looking for healing and comfort during personal stress or anxious from state of the world. I had the pleasure to hear Ms. Burnett speak, and she is a eloquent in speech as she is in writing. Highly recommend and makes you look for moss.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an unusual book. Part memoir dealing with the author's grief, part nature writing about moss interspersed with prayer-like poetic reflections on specific moss species. Some illustrations of the mosses would have really enhanced the book.

[Grace · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wanted a book to learn about moss and this wasn't that. Instead it was a stunning mix of travel journal, self help and connection with the earth which was beautifully written and left me feeling things

[Sarah Kirby · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such an unusual and interesting book, with beautiful descriptions of mosses and the stories and people around them. Not only are the many poems fascinating, the prose itself is wonderfully poetic too. An absorbing and powerful study of grief, nature and how the one helps the other.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Haibun. Reflections on grief and the wisdom gained through time in nature.