Rhizomes

These poems are a product of trespass, burnt foliage, transpiration, and digital fixation. During the 2020 lockdown, Hughes walked across the private golf course located behind her home, veering further away from the public footpath each day. This was both a political and poetic move, which abruptly came to an end when Chobham Common, adjacent to the curated fairway, burnt for 10 days during an August heatwave. Asking whether the form for new crisis-facing ecopoetries be found in the landscape itself, Hughes starts out in the open, borrowing from subterranean stems, the ridges and furrows of bark, soundscapes of birdsong and waste disposal systems, and new pathways or meanderings.