Read as part of the Wainwright Prize list - thanks for the proof! Enjoyed the natural history/travel elements and the connections between family history and nature,

This is a book that explore the grief and I find the poetry on it not my cuppa of tea. Is more a prose and a ode to moss, not what I was expecting to read from the title. Isn’t a bad book is just probably not my time to enjoy it. Is not bad written is not bad created and I think if you into poetry this may be something you really enjoy because some of the poems on there as such a delight to read

Twelve Words for Moss is a stunning read, exploring grief through understanding species of moss - how they grow, where, when, and under what conditions. Elizabeth-Jane Burnett has crafted twelve essays fragmentary and poetic in nature, interspersed with poems dedicated to different species of moss. What ties it all together is Burnett's wish to remember her late father, learn more about her mother's childhood in Kenya, and to allow herself the chance to love someone like M.

Thus, this collection is far more than just a culmination of all Burnett has learned about moss in the UK - our peat bogs and wetlands, our forests and valleys - this is about losing and gaining, love in all forms - familial, platonic and romantic, and the self. All of which leads to a greater sense of belonging and home.

Burnett's voice is one to get lost in - to immerse yourself just as Burnett does in water many times in these essays. Every reader will find themselves gifted with a new appreciation for moss and understand that there is something incredibly comforting in imagining ourselves as moss too - to breathe, to stretch, to flourish, to stay.

This was not the book I was quite expecting to read. Before beginning at the beginning I expected a sort of moss encyclopaedia, factual but impersonal. The reality however was far from this. Elizabeth-Jane Burnett has written in essence a poetical ode to moss, combining her personal life with the existence of the plants. At first I wasn’t too sure how this would work but it links surprisingly well, after all all people share lived experiences and yet we are all different too, not so completely unlike moss. A uniquely written book.

“In the darkness, mosses show us how to hold the light.” I always cherish reading new work from Elizabeth-Jane Burnett, from her poetry collections to her memoir The Grassling; in her latest work, Twelve Words For Moss, Burnett blends poetry and prose to unfold a story about grief, lineage, and eternity. Using moss and all its meanings, uses, associations to explore more personal ideas around the death of her father, her grandmother’s roots in Embu, and finding love in the wake of loss. “If touched they will warm / if blushed they will form / a circuit of light in the bark / to lead you with leaves / in shimmering wreaths / small halos that burn in the dark. / *In the rush of the ground letting go / all that’s buried inside of its loam / there are altars of light where the old mosses glow.*” Her work is full of these pockets of joy, her writing reverberating with genuine love and wonder for the world around us, for the people in it, and for the great work of the writer. “Wherever there is light I gratefully choose it and where there is moss there will always be music. For moss is the light of the earth and when it grows inside it cannot be hidden but courses through the limp stitching of the body. You may have closed yourself off and been bound up tight, hovering unbearably on the brink of the night, yet, do not lose heart. There is growing in you a family of light, scattered, yet connected, a symphony of brightness plays its ghost-notes through the blood you thought you had lost — that is moss, growing on your gleaming bones, threading the song of you into the stones, flooding the spires of your tapering homes — that is moss and not loss that shapes you.” A vital, moving read.

Honestly, when I first heard of this book, I had the impression that it would be just a poetry collection, something that was far from that. It was part-poetry, part-narration, part-scientific.

Our MC after having lost her father, tries to come to terms with her grief, while reminding and presenting us some scenes of her childhood, with an absolutely lyrical way. It just screams cottagecore (which I loved about it) and it can surely set the mood, making you believe that you are a Studio Ghibli protagonist (for which goal I alwys strive).

Another interesting thing was, that all essays of this, all of the poems, each chapter was interwoven with each other. Apart from the biological information mentioned in the book, the us of the metaphors is fenomenal. And it reminds us how the urban world and the natural world are connected, with no borders whatsoever.

Thank you Penguin Random House for senidng an ARC to me, and thank you NetGalley for the acceptance of said request in exchange for an honest review!

I loved this beautiful book--the subject matter, the writing, the structure, and the personal insights.

The author is grieving the loss of her father and finds hope in the way moss grows, thrives, and survives, even under harsh conditions. She finds comfort in her pursuit of knowledge about mosses. She revels in the times she can spend in the natural world, but since she is forced to be in a city for work much of the time, she is able to look for and observe the mosses growing in the urban environment she inhabits. She says that in times of grief or other hard times, a friend found it helpful to focus on small details to "block out the bigger picture." For her, mosses serve this purpose as well as providing a focal point from which she can explore various other aspects of her life and history, as well as that of her ancestors. She finds connections with her mother's experiences growing up in Kenya, for example.

The book is written/structured in an interesting and very effective way. There are short poems about specific kinds of mosses, but also prose sections. Nestled within these sections are rhyming sentences that form mini-poems within the prose.

Being a fan of moss myself, I enjoyed reading about it and how it grows. I will have even more respect for it now that I have read this book. Beyond that, this is jsimply a lovely book to read. The descriptions of the moss, the insights the author gains through her close observations, the gorgeous writing, the mini-poems within the prose, and the foundation of hope the author finds--each strand weaves together into a whole cloth that is full of colour, vibrancy, and beauty.

I thought this book was going to be just a poetry collection, but it also includes a sort of essay collection on moss thoughts (or maybe one long essay broken down into little parts). This was the ecologically-minded cottagecore book I didn't know I needed, and once I figure out how to get my hands on a print copy, I'm going to give one to a friend. One sad note: it appears to be primarily a UK publication? I read it through NetGalley, so I'm not sure if or when it'll be more widely available in the US.

All of the poems and essays are interconnected, not just around the topic of moss, but around themes of loss and reclamation, biology and ecology, nature and industry, and the consideration of biomes. It's part memoir, part love letter, part reminder that the divide between the natural world and the industrialized world is permeable. Also, she makes friends with moss. It's charming.

I really enjoyed this book, even though it is about mourning and moss at the end and how this latter plant, which is largely underrated, manages to make a very lyrical prose backdrop. My only regret is that, not being a native English speaker, I often missed details.

Questo libro mi é piaciuto molto, anche se alla fine si parla di lutto e di muschio e di come quest'ultima pianta, ampiamente sottovalutata, riesca a fare da sfondo ad una prosa molto lirica. Il mio unico dispiacere é che, non essendo inglese madre lingua, spesso mi sfuggivano dei dettagli.

I received from the Publisher a complimentary digital advanced review copy of the book in exchange for a honest review.