Meet the Author: Elizabeth-Jane Burnett

Photo credit: Graham Shackleton

9 September 2025

Dr Elizabeth-Jane Burnett is a writer, academic and Guardian Country diarist whose work has a largely environmental focus. Publications include works of nature writing, poetry and literary criticism. Twelve Words for Moss was shortlisted for the Wainwright and Jhalak prizes and a Sunday Times and Countryfile Book of the Year. Her novel, Splendour, is forthcoming with Penguin in 2026.

She is the author of The Grassling which is one of our Wild Reads picks for 2025 and Swims, a Sunday Times Poetry Book of the Year, and her poetry has been highly commended in the Forward Prize.

You can find Elizabeth-Jane’s books on the Katalog bibliotek społeczności Suffolk.

What was your first introduction to books and reading? Were you surrounded by books as a child or did you visit a library?

I was surrounded by books – some of my earliest memories are of inspecting the ground-level shelves (the only ones I could reach!) in the house. It was filled to bursting with books by my father who was a historian, linguist and avid reader. I have always used libraries too and remember taking out more books than I could physically carry from my primary school library. In later years, I wrote one of my first books in the British Library.

When did you first start writing poetry?

I’ve written as long as I can remember and wrote poetry as a child, as well as stories. I also used a journal and wrote freely without any thought of what genre it might be.

Is it true that you had been writing for 10 years before Swims was published?

My writing had been published in small-press pamphlets and journals and so on for more than 10 years before the collection was published. In fact, my first two books were then published in the same year – the other being a book of literary criticism (which I wrote in a library).

The Grassling has been chosen as one of our Wild Reads books this year. Can you tell us a little about it and how you came to write it?

Thank you so much for choosing it! My writing often explores environmental issues and at the time that I began The Grassling, I was doing a lot of research into soil. In fact, the subtitle of the book is A Geological Memoir, which reflects that scientific and material research into soil and the broken-down rock that forms it. When my father fell very ill, I started thinking more about the particular soils that linked us and wanted to find out as much as I could about them. The book focuses on fields in and near the village of Ide in Devon where my father grew up and where our family farmed for generations.

What inspired the alphabetical layout of the chapters?

When I was writing the book, I thought of it as A Dictionary of the Soil. This is mentioned in the book when I discuss the title with my father. Although the title didn’t stay, its ghost remains through the alphabetical chapter layout.

The Grassling explores a sense of belonging and our rootedness to the world. Is this something you’ve always felt or was there a moment when you became more aware of this?

I was lucky to grow up in the countryside and always felt a strong connection to the natural world. I come from farming heritage on both sides of the family. I have perhaps felt the longing for the connection all the more keenly at the times when I’ve lived in cities for work. Part of the project of my poetry collection, Swims, was to enable me to get to open water at a time when I was living in the landlocked West Midlands. In Twelve Words for Moss, I tried to find the wildness within the city (as well as further afield) that exists in mosses.

I’d like to ask about the National Trust poem Spring – An inventory (2021). How did that come about and was it a challenge having 400 contributions to sift through that you had to knit together into an original work?

I was commissioned by the National Trust and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to write a poem using contributions from the public on their impressions of Spring 2021. The pandemic brought a new dimension to the return of the light that year and it was wonderful to be part of something collective and uplifting. It was challenging, of course, but such a privilege.

Co dalej?

A novel called Splendour, coming out with Penguin in 2026. It’s focused on trees and set in both England and Kenya.

Wild Reads is all about nature and our relationship with it. Who are your favourite nature writers?

I grew up reading Gilbert White and have the kind of mind that appreciates the quiet cataloguing of rainfall (he does more than this of course!) in A Natural History of Selborne. Rachel Carson. Robin Wall Kimmerer. There are so many excellent nature writers today – recently, I’ve enjoyed Helen Czerski’s and Helen Scales’ writing on the sea.

Nature writing often encourages us to notice things more. What’s your favourite thing to spot when you are out and about?

So much is seasonal, with certain favourites coming at different times of the year but I am also a big believer in the wonder in everything, not just the glamorous highlights. That was part of the reason I wrote about moss – it’s so overlooked but as worthy of attention as anything flashier. My favourite moss (although it’s hard to show preference!) is Thuidium Tamariscinum – Common Tamarisk-moss.