Twelve Words for Moss

SHORTLISTED FOR THE JHALAK PRIZE 2024

Shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize 2023 for Nature Writing

'Exquisite, luminous and quietly radical . . . utterly unique and refreshing' Lucy Jones

Where nothing grows, moss is the spark that triggers new life. Embarking on a journey though landscape, memory and recovery, Elizabeth-Jane Burnett explores this mysterious, ancient marvel of the plant world, meditating on and renaming her favourite mosses – from Glowflake to Little Loss – and drawing inspiration from place, people and language itself.

'Fascinating, subtle and risk-taking . . . Poetry, descriptive-evocative prose, memory, memoir, natural history and more all drift and mingle in strikingly new ways' Robert Macfarlane

Reviews

With a blend of poetry, memoir and a uniquely experimental, sensory style of nature writing, The Grassling celebrates the lusciousness of both land and language ... Ideas that might in a lesser writer have seemed whimsical are grounded by the rich layers of Burnett's prose