Victoria Gatehouse

The Hawthorn Bride

Here are poems as a personal response to the trees and shrubs of the ancient Ogham, poems celebrating creatures both captive and wild – pandas, wood-frogs, peacocks, Pavlov’s dogs. Rooted in a Yorkshire landscape of crags, moorland, reservoirs and woods, this collection navigates both the joy, and the fragility, of our relationship with the natural world.

ISBN 978-1-912876-86-0

Paperback 78 pages

£11 +P&P

THE AUTHOR

Victoria Gatehouse is a Zoologist, award-winning poet and children’s writer. Her poetry has been broadcast on BBC radio and she has been widely published in magazines including The Rialto and Mslexia. Her pamphlet The Mechanics of Love (Smith|Doorstop) was selected as a ‘Laureate’s Choice’ by Carol Ann Duffy.

Victoria has won, and been placed in, many competitions and is also a three-times winner of The Poetry News Members’ Competition. She was highly commended for the Gingko Prize, 2023.

“The Hawthorn Bride is a meticulous study of ‘possibility’ … a poet held in nature, sustained by what thrives there. Also taking place is a journey of truthful acceptance.”

~ Rebecca Goss

"Victoria Gatehouse brings an unusual and moving combination of viewpoints to Calderdale’s natural environment. On the one hand there’s her scientist’s acute observational eye, on the other, her poems thrum with love, visceral familiarity, and the older, deep rivers of pagan folklore. Consistency, formal control, and some exquisite imagery make this collection a pleasure to read."

~ Carola Luther

“The Hawthorn Bride gives us a poetic narrative unfolding across interwoven themes that teem and speak in ‘a riot of shattered golds.’”

~ Sarah Corbett

Cover design by © Joolz Fleetwood