The Grassling

by Elizabeth-Jane Burnett

'A subtle, moving celebration of place and connectedness . . . brings the sounds, smells and sights of the countryside alive like few other books' Guardian

What fills my lungs is wider than breath could be. It is a place and a language torn, matted and melded; flowered and chiming with bones. That breath is that place and until I get there I will not really be breathing.

Spurred on by her father's declining health and inspired by the history he once wrote of his small Devon village, Elizabeth-Jane Burnett delves through layers of memory, language and natural history to tell a powerful story of how the land shapes us and speaks to us. The Grassling is a book about roots: what it means to belong when the soil beneath our feet is constantly shifting, when the people and places that nurtured us are slipping away.

Genres: Nonfiction, Nature, Poetry, Memoir, Summer, Autobiography

256 pages, Paperback

First published March 7, 2019

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

[Viv JM · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is such a unique book - a blend of nature writing, memoir and poetry. There were a lot of descriptive passages that I enjoyed as well as very astute and arresting observations about land and belonging. However, this is very much a prose book written by a poet and at times it just felt too dreamy for me personally - I would read whole chapters and whilst enjoying the feel and rhythm of the words, could not tell you anything of what the chapter was "about". This detracted from the enjoyment for me but might be just the thing that another reader would absolutely love about the book!

[Rebecca]

I read the first 55 pages. This is a nature memoir of sorts, built out of short essays whose titles run from A to Z. Burnett teaches in Birmingham but her roots are in Ide, Devon, where her 80-year-old father is in hospital at the time of the book’s writing, and in Kenya. She has previously published poetry, and is going for extreme lyricism in the prose here, which at times makes it feel overwritten (especially in the prologue). There are some really pretentious passages, like a “found poem” listing all the yellow things she passed on a journey. Some of the descriptions, and meditations on ancestry, are lovely, but I found I was itching to move on to other things.

A representative passage: “In the evening, I gather lupins in the spilling sun. A deer flanks through the apple trees. Its golden brass flares a turn, as eye to eye we dance. In the slow half-turn of a drowsy pirouette, instinct tells her to go; appled air ripens, pulling her back.”

[Naomi Carlill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a pleasure to read. This refreshing reflection was just the medicine I needed to start this new year. I want to hold onto this book forever.

[Sophy H · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is nature writing like no other.

Elizabeth Jane-Burnett comes at it from a poet's perspective, a rooting, delving, burrowing look at the surroundings where her ancestors lived and worked and researched the land, all the while dealing with her father's continuing illness and frailty.

Her format works to a point; the writing is beautiful and you can see Burnett is completely in love with the written word. Some passages feel obscure however and it's difficult to find a point to them, not that there needs to be a point I suppose.

I think the abstruse nature of writing here forces you to read this in a different way, just go on the journey with her, ride the experience and savour the written word. That's all you can do.

[Ella Raw · Rating 2 out of 5]

‘Geological memoir’ might just be the most boring literary phrase counjurable, and despite this truth, The Grassling was actually okay-ish. Immersive and lucid prose depict the transient connections of all living things, inanimate or not, as Burnett describes the natural world in simplistic precision. By tracing her past through the present, Burnett seems to uncover that Imbued in the self are the cultivated histories derived from plants and the cycle of life; in her eyes we are one with nature as nature is one with itself.
Though plot is not always necessary to story, The Grassling’s lack of it made the text slightly too monotonous, lacking any actual direction and substance. It is supposed to be a memoir, but we learn virtually nothing about Burnett, except maybe her father is dying, and I might have read that on the blurb. The Grassling is something new and different, but can’t say I’d read anything else by Burnett unless it’s a quid in the charity shop and basically forced into my hand.

[Kirsty · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had heard nothing about Elizabeth-Jane Burnett's nature memoir, The Grassling: A Geographical Memoir, before stumbling across it on an Instagram post. I was intrigued enough by its blurb to request a copy from the library, and I am so pleased that I took the chance. Burnett, who has previously published poetry collections, was 'spurred on' to write The Grassling by the declining health of her father. Her intention here is to permeate 'layers of memory, language and natural history to tell a powerful story of how the land shapes us and speaks to us.'

The book is entirely set around the countryside in Devon, which Burnett grew up within. She writes at length about the changing seasons, and , whilst also weaving in bigger questions about her identity and belonging. As a half-Kenyan woman, she finds herself Othered at times, not at home in the place which she spent so much of her young life. She writes, early on, 'I turn back to the earth. The magnetism of the land, not just where I was birthed, but where my father was; his father and his; pulls me to it, as if by knowing it, I should know them.'

From the outset, it is clear that The Grassling has been written by a poet. Burnett's grasp of vocabulary is rich, and has such a striking beauty to it. Her writing is visceral, and incredibly visual; it heightens all of the senses. The opening paragraph begins: 'On the shortest day, the light never ends. Conifers buffer deep gusts of air, animals cry. The sky stings of a metal or an ore, iron wool rolled flat from moon to field. No stars. Clouds ripple the darkening grey. It must be darker because colours are, but the feeling is still of light. The body and the air.'

I recognise that The Grassling will not appeal to everyone, but I found it beautiful and reflective. Burnett is candid throughout, constantly reasserting what she is seeking out. She is admirably in touch with her surroundings, and I found a real reverence toward the landscape within the piece. I loved her approach, in which she blends together a series of different narrative techniques. The Grassling is an unusual and original book in many ways, and whilst it is not entirely straightforward at points, it is well worth seeking out. Burnett is capable of making us see the things around us with fresh eyes, and that is a real gift.

[Cynthia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like The Grassling -- the words and imagery are just stunning and I found it very inspirational in certain ways, but in the end it was tough going and was far too abstract and tedious for me. I couldn't get behind any of the chapters when she is "The Grassling" and ended up trying hard to grasp at any tangible story. This is really *pure and beautiful nature writing*, but in saying this, I feel that it is not really for everyone, as much as I enjoyed the parts more involving the author and her father.

[Katrina Clarke · Rating 5 out of 5]

After a funny wave of intuition and certainty that this was the book I needed, I have been awed by my reading experience of The Grassling. I tried Twelve Words for Moss ages ago and it didn't click with me, so I'm relieved I didn't put two and two together and put myself off this book. I will read this again. I will try Twelve Words for Moss again. I want to live in this book.

Elizabeth's lyrical, fluid and varied writing takes you into the field furrows, scratchy hedgerows and through her own heritage of family and landscape. Sensory and strange, sad and beautiful, I read so many of these lines out loud or under my breath to bring them to life as much as possible.

Elizabeth is a unique and talented writer and I think she has changed my understanding of nature writing with this book.

- Agriculture
- Land ownership
- Grief
- Colour and shades
- Kenyan-English heritage
- Belonging and race
- Generational memory
- Geological memory

I was gifted this book for my birthday and I couldn't have dreamed of a book more perfect for these spring days. It was read with such love.

[Anneliese Tirry · Rating 3 out of 5]

***(*).
Auteur Elizabeth-Jane Burnett keert in het laatste levensjaar van haar vader vaak terug naar het dorp waar hij woont en opgroeide, waar haar voorouders van vaders kant (haar moeder is Keniaanse) hun leven maakten en wil haar voorvaderlijke grond beter leren kennen. Dit gaat ten dele via een historisch boek dat haar vader over dit dorp schreef en dat vaak haar leidraad is, maar dit gaat ook door observatie. Ze observeert de flora en de fauna op een zeer bijzondere manier, soms deed ze me wat denken aan Annie Dillard, maar dan poëtischer.
Ze gaat nog veel verder dan enkel het observeren, ze wordt de flora, ze wordt het gras, ze proeft de grond, ze wortelt in die voorvaderlijke grond, ze wordt er een deel van.
Dit boek bevat prachtige passages en krachtige beschrijvingen, maar soms is het zo geëxalteerd dat ik een beetje plaatsvervangende gène voelde. Maar ik ben dan ook uitzonderlijk braaf ;-)
Een boek voor wie houdt van natuur en poëzie en wil ondergaan.

[betsy]

even though I don't rate books that I read for school I wish I hadn't read this one. Take from that what you will. I could very easily donate this book once my module has finished however I will keep this on my bookshelf for the rest of my life out of sheer spite

[Lottie · Rating 2 out of 5]

That was rough

[Jessie Acton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very beautiful, poetically written, sometimes a little hard to grasp onto. Lovely when you get into it, and some of the imagery is glorious, but a bit of a lack of tangible purpose to make you want to keep reading.

[Eve · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The soil needs its own dictionary.”

This review is totally not going to give this beautiful book justice. I read it for our Climate Justice bookclub and its a wonderful geological memoir combining nostalgic and heartwarming poetry with nature writing in a search for belonging.

It’s not my ‘kind’ of book and found it tricky to read but I’m in awe of the writing, the author and the words. Unlike classic white man nature writers, Burnett brings the nature to life. She uses all the senses and paints a picture of the environment that as readers we can taste, smell, see and admire.

I loved the particular playfulness in the exploration of what it means to belong and connect. She writes

“While others see him as belonging...they do not see that in me. So while I am pulled towards that place by all that is deeply knotted in me, I am pulled back by those there now”

She reimagines ideas of belonging and community through layers of geology, history, language and memory. Really powerful story of how land and soil shapes us.

[Sally Piper · Rating 4 out of 5]

A poetic memoir that traverses the landscape of grief and home with an eye for the minute detail of the connections between people and places.

[Roxani]

A favorite excerpt: “Lightness is both a color and a weight. [...] The soil needs its own dictionary.”

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is familiar, this ebb and flow, a 400-million-year echo of a time this earth still carries in its rock. A time when this field was a sea, and we had yet to come. When the field was a desert, and we had yet to come. When the field was the bottom of a lake, and we were no one.

I have read poems about nature, but this is my first time encountering the terms "eco-poetry" and "geological memoir." As a reader, I have never felt this close to nature before. "The Grassling" provided an entirely different experience. I felt as if I was literally there, standing next to the author—feeling the moistness of the soil, touching the wet grass, and hearing the songs of the birds.

If you read this book,

🌿 You will learn to appreciate your native land.

That breath is that place and until I get there I will not really be breathing.

🌿 You will learn to listen to the untold stories.

Then comes a period when the earth tells us nothing. A break in the sedimentary record. In people, too, there are moments of erasure. Things buried, places that we cannot access. We may think that they look well, or just the same. But things will have disappeared; parts of them lost, or laid at the bottom of a long-forgotten sea.

🌿You will yearn to learn more about history

I look at the now defunct bridge, over a thousand years old, and wonder that I have never noticed it before; that I have never been this side of the carriageway, despite my now frequent recent visits to the village. It reminds me just how narrow our trajectories are, even when we’re actively trying to expand them

🌿You will realise the importance of protecting nature

When one voice falls away, they all do. The place without words is a dangerous place to linger. Where there are no words there is only rock to knock against. Where there are no words there is no join. Where there are no words there is nothing to bring it back. If it stays here too long, it will not return.

The Grassling is also about family and ageing parents.

Inside, my father looks down, curved by brittleness of bone. Inside, the house is full of spiders, escaping the farmer’s harvest blade. They scatter over draining boards, the back of the sofa, windowsills, on their way I don’t know where. I don’t want to move them. I love the multiplicity of leg. Two is too limiting. Two stalks of bone that break apart with the movement of months. That wear down, into smaller and smaller steps. That can’t take you anywhere anymore; that leave you relentlessly inside your own body, with nowhere left to run.

It also speaks about adulthood and its challenges.

Wyrd bið ful ārǣd!’ ‘Events always go as they must!’ ‘Swā cwæð eardstapa’: ‘So spoke the Wanderer.’ And it is the lift and drop of the fork that I fall back on, though it is my own hand now around the tines. I must bear the beat of the waves. I must hold steady through the change.

Overall it was 3.5 ish, but this book was so unique so I ended up giving 4🌟

People are not ours to own. We coexist, if we’re lucky.

The Grassling is much more than a book. It’s an ode to the mother nature and life. Kudos to Elizabeth-Jane Burnett for this beautiful piece of work 💚

[Keli Tomlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely stunning piece of wild writing, evoking the aliveness of more-than-human beings without compromising their integrity, identity or their worth.

Burnett's poetic skill allows her to imagine and bring to life seemingly inanimate beings, giving them voice, texture and scent, and inviting us to share in her sensory encounters with them.

Primarily the grass of her father's acre, but also birds, trees, blossoms and loam; Burnett shows us how much life and relationship can truly be found in one small patch of ground.

The interweaving of her father's journey towards death, the grief and fear surrounding that inevitable loss, and the steady narrative following her explorations of the sleep village where she grew up keep this, at times, overwhelmingly sensory tale, rooted in reality. The resonance between the cycles of human life and feeling, and the turning of the seasons is delicately done.

The chapters are short, just a page or two each, and the memoir type narrative is interspersed evenly with reportage and the more classic descriptions of the outdoors. But it is in the 'grassling' chapters themselves, where the grass and other more than human beings are conjured into life, that this book truly sings.

A treat, to be savoured without worrying about meaning. Like a poem, this book is full of specificity and space for your own dreaming.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘This freedom is a feeling [...] that I will try to carry with me wherever I go.' 'In the times that lie ahead, as territories narrow and common borders close, I will think of this forest. The clumps of moss, the cool of water, the hills that hold. To remember this [...] whenever I land against something telling me I shouldn’t be there.’
.
The Grassling is a beautiful book. It is memoir, poetry and nature writing at its best. Burnett’s prose blends these genres and stretches across body, time and place. As she walks across the fields that belong to her family, and brings her dying father handfuls of its grass and flowers, you feel you are there too. She describes the sound of bird-song, the shape of the plants and the taste of the soil in such a multi-sensory way. The Grassling is also a deeply personal exploration of localness and identity within nature writing and eco-poetry as Burnett reflects on her British-Kenyan heritage. There were so many parts I underlined. She imagines a ‘dirt-speckled alphabet, lifted out of the earth like a row of beans’ and looks back to ‘[a] time when this field was a sea, and we had yet to come.’ As Burnett writes, ‘reading could be a many-layered thing, a digging thing: a harvest.’ 4.5 stars.

[Ella Bowman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found it initially difficult to get into the lyrical prose of this book, however when I did, the writing is undeniably beautiful.
There is a focus throughout this book on the ability to relax and specifically the process of breathing, which felt appropriate considering that the reading experience of this book felt similar to a sigh of relief.
It was overall a beautiful tribute to nature and the countryside and I really enjoyed it.

I mean it had to be three stars alone for this line:
“ every gap in and between the body has potential. Here are the soft parts of myself that will grow if I let them. If I make enough space and protect it. Flowers do not come from the strong open poses. They come in the small, protected bulbs of the body. They grow in me like a silent radiance.”
I am rarely brought close to tears by the beauty of writing but I felt Burnett managed to express something I’d long felt but never been able to quite say. You know when you hear something you had no idea you’d needed to be told.

[Juliano · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The glitter of it settling on the furniture; a golden snow that warms as it falls and melts as it stores all the day’s light, all the days of days of light.” In her “geological memoir” The Grassling, Elizabeth-Jane Burnett presents an “encyclopedia of the soil”, a story about her life and her father, their family history and how it lies in the land. The first part of the book beautifully situates Burnett’s memoir in the landscape, while the second half explodes the form open, the final four letters of the alphabet stretched out like time dilating, escalating both the poetic aspects and the nature writing, juxtaposing her tender memoir with an extraordinary, evocative account of the eponymous Grassling. The quality of feeling and craft, especially as the layered and lyrical prose reaches its conclusion, is sublime and truly magnificent.

[Esther Button · Rating 3 out of 5]

read for uni.

Whilst some of the passages in this book were breathtaking (Burnett is certainly a talented, lyrical writer), I found it somewhat of a struggle to get through. At only 180 pages, it should not have felt long, but it did - the focus on nature was beautiful but repetitive, and nothing really happened (I love a book with limited plot, but this one was hard to become immersed in, as its detailed descriptions of nature and place were not necessarily in line with my reading preferences). Described as a mix of memoir, prose and poetry, this book is a very interesting read, and I am glad that it's on my uni course, as I never would have picked it up otherwise. If you are a passionate nature lover, you would thoroughly enjoy this.

rating as of 12/04/2023: 3 stars

[Ed Moore · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Grassling is a collection of nature memoirs describing the fields and hills of Devon, written by an environmental scientist who grew up there. It contains a multitude of beautiful descriptions of nature and has an eco-critical focus throughout, exploring the connection between man and the natural world. Whereas that is also all it is, just descriptions of fields and nature, and Burnett recounting her experience performing her work in said fields. Whilst the descriptions begin nice, they quickly become repetitive and boring, there is also no real take away other than the idea of man’s association with nature. There’s little else to say, I found that after the quarter-point the book just grew to be tiresome.

[Dr. des. Siobhán · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Grassling" is a very poetic story of a place and its inhabitants. The author, Elizbaeth-Jane Burnett is of mixed heritage (England and Kenia) and it informs her writing. While the majority is about South-West England and the place where parts of her family now lives and has lived for centuries, Kenia and its lush flora sneak their way into the narrative too. Burnett is an ecopoet and I enjoyed the novel a lot - I will quote parts of it in my dissertation I believe. Even though some of the descriptions were too long, too detailed, too much, I enjoyed it. I sometimes lack the attention span to really immerse myself into a narrative like this... 4 stars

[Umay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, I did not expect to like this books as much as I did. There is so much to learn from this book; so much about connection and dichotomy. This book talks in twos and the beautiful hybridity of the work reflects that very well — Time is running out, there is still time. The soil is ours, we cannot truly own anything. Places hold so many memories at the same time and all of them can coexist.

I cannot truly talk about how great this book is in this short review, neither can I express what it’s about as good as the book itself can. Highly recommend; will make you want to stop to smell the roses :))

[Zoë Siobhan Baillie · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Where is the Society of Soil, Mourning and Metamorphosis, I wonder, where people who wander around fields slowly turning into something they don't recognize gather for lunch and read transcriptions of soil song?"

I'm not used to reading a lot of poetry so this was quite a departure from what I'm used to with nature memoir and tbh some of it probably went over my unlearned head. That said, I love soil more than most people can comprehend so this immersive and often bizarre homage to rubbing your face in the grass sits well with me.

[Susannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

A poet, roaming the Devon lands of her dying father and of his forefathers, the author likes hiding in hedgerows and swimming through soil. She writes beautifully about soil, ground, loam, rotifers. Words, beautiful nature words including Olde English. A bit bonkers sometimes but calming to read.

[Sue Hampton · Rating 5 out of 5]

A totally original book is a rare treasure and this is full of love, empathy and understanding, with daringly poetic prose that evokes all the sensual beauty of the natural world. I sometimes had to read it aloud to savour the language, and as someone who loved my dad very deeply I connected emotionally with the narrator's relationship with a dying father. Gorgeousness on every page.

[Mica M Gillard · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve never read anything like this book before. It’s so cleverly woven and very against the grain: Burnett is out there doing her own thing! (Which I think confuses a lot of people). Very raw and intimate at times, exploratory. Had to read each chapter a few times honestly- so not what I’d class as an easy read. A very thought provoking one. I loved it.

[Eva · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a difficult book to rate - while it's of course true that every reading experience is subjective, this book relies almost solely on the degree to which the lyrical text speaks to the reader. Some of the lines I found to be deeply profound but the rest was mostly okay for me - hence the three stars - but I can imagine this to be a great reading experience for others.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Echoing the other comments, it's a beautifully written evocative book combining the history of the countryside with that of one family, evolving and growing through time. However, best dropped in and out off so has been returned to the library without being finished.