Flora Poetica: The Chatto Book of Botanical Verse

This beautifully compiled and designed anthology brings together over 250 poems about flowers, plants and trees from eight centuries of writing in English. Fourteenth-century lyrics sit next to poems of the twenty-first century; celebrations of plants native to the English soil share the volume with more exotic plant poetry from further afield, creating a cornucopia of intriguing juxtapositions. There are thirty poems about roses, by poets as diverse as Shakespeare, Dorothy Parker and the South African, Seitlhamo Motsapi; but there are also sections devoted to more unusual plants such as the mandrake, the starapple and the tamarind. An ex-gardener, the poet Sarah Maguire brings her extensive botanical knowledge to bear on all the poems, arranging them into botanical families, identifying the plants being written about and writing a fascinating introduction about how the history of flowers goes hand in hand with the history of English poetry. Whether you are a poetry lover, a gardener, a botanist, or simply the purchase of an occasional bouquet, this unique anthology allows you to luxuriate amidst the world’s flora.