books

 Q&A: about my new book

~ Julia Kendal ~ Leave a comment

A short version: I’ve published my first poetry collection. It’s called Unborn, it explores themes of family, fertility and identity, and you can buy it here.

A longer version: This is a book about bearing life. The poems are an exploration of family and identity, faith and loss, during the hidden years trying to conceive. They speak of grief for what never was and hope not yet arrived. It’s a tender topic and personal piece of work. It’s also a common but still comparatively taboo subject. I could rely on the statistics (one in seven couples) but I’m more compelled by the stories which touch each of our lives – whether it’s your own experience, or that of a family member, dear friend, treasured colleague… If it feels like this book might help you or someone you know to feel a bit less lonely or a bit more seen in tough times, I’d love it if you shared it with them.

Why did you write this book? 

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Three stories: Rootbound, Unearthed, Earthed 

~ Julia Kendal ~ Leave a comment
Purple salvia flowers with a bee landed on one of them

In the last couple of weeks, the heat has finally returned to our little patch of Hampshire earth. Some of the plants (clematis, salvia, nasturtiums) have reached the stage where you feel you can see their growth daily. And with the sun’s return, I too seem to be waking up.

Since November, I have had a list above my desk labelled ‘for winter’. It includes things like ‘mustard yellow woolly socks’, ‘vitamin D tablets’, ‘fire pit’. It quotes a favoured line from a Jenny King poem, ‘The midday peace is warm and edible’*. And it reminds me to keep reading. 

There have been a lot of books through winter (a season I understand intellectually but rage against to my bones). These are three of them. Three books, three women, three contexts; the stories they weave join dots in my mind and are manifold. They are all part memoir, but they are also much more. Tracking the history of land, of roots, of connection. Of learning and of changing. They have been good for me. You may like them too. 

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Home comforts through a locked down life

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Photo by Milada Vigerova on Unsplash

Well, these have been some months. An uncharted and unsettling world, experienced from the enduring familiarity of home. In June last year we finally left the flat. Walked down the street. Saw the hand-drawn declarations of support for the NHS with our own eyes. Learned to stick together and keep our distance. We have been fortune to see the sea; spring-cleaning for the soul. We have been able to spend time with our families without the glare of screens. 

Still, a year on, most of life has remained within these walls. I thought I would turn to our bookshelves to travel, explore. I tried Robert MacFarlane’s ‘Mountains of the Mind’. Wonderful, sweeping, but too vast and distant for my current reality. I started novels of heartbreak, but found myself reluctant to pick them up after a day of work and news overload. I have learned that in this current life, I seek to stay safe, cocooned. I return to favourites (Tolkien, Atwood, Barbery). And I read about food. 

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Bread, Wine, Chocolate

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bread_wine_chocolate_sethi_book

Add in coffee – which the book does – and you basically have my ideal diet (if health wasn’t a consideration. Which it is). Simran Sethi’s book journeys through the origins, production and threats to some of the world’s favourite foods in this time of monoculture, habitat loss and climate change. She teaches us – with the help of experts – to find the story in every taste, focusing on five foods: wine, chocolate, coffee, beer and bread. But her message is broader than these particular items; by understanding what we’re losing, we can start to claim it back.

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How Green Are My Wellies?

~ Julia Kendal ~ 1 Comment

how_green_are_my_wellies

Garbed in wellies, I feel a certain sense of invincibility. I can stride out, confident that my feet will step sure and stay dry throughout the day’s adventure. Wellies open up new routes. A treasured memory from recent years is of a low-tide adventure at Emsworth. It’s a place that we normally experience from the water, joining the hoards sailing on Chichester harbour. This time however, the water had receded with the tide and we were armed not with deck shoes but with wellies. Standing in the mud that we normally we sail over was wonderfully surreal; an experience heightened by the setting sun, made possible through the humble welly.

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2016 Aspirations

~ Julia Kendal ~ 3 Comments

2016_aspirations

When catching up on the Downton Abbey Christmas special, the post-festive season adverts told me it was time to start getting fit, redecorating the house and booking holidays. These themes did arise in our New Year’s Eve reflections on the year past and the days ahead, but they weren’t the only features of our discussion. We are content with the framework we have established for our lives, prioritising sustainable living, fostering community, exploring creativity and honouring God. In 2016 we hope to continue on this trajectory, which means making more incremental steps to thread these throughout the fabric of our lives.

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Microadventure

~ Julia Kendal ~ 3 Comments

microadventure_wharf microadventure_sunset

Friday evening had arrived. The work was done, or at least paused with sufficient peace to leave it for the weekend. It was an evening marked by early autumn – just enough light in the sky, warm enough to begin in a jumper; jackets would be pulled on later. The day’s stories would have to wait for when darkness came. For now we hastily found out high vis jackets, lights, shedding to-do lists and perceived obligations, and got on the bikes before any more light slipped below the horizon.

Once we’d turned right instead of the usual left, that feeling set in. Continue reading →