We are living in a golden age of nature writing, and books about the great outdoors are flourishing. 

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Reading lists

The best books for nature lovers

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

Twelve Words for Moss is a fascinating, subtle and risk-taking book; its remarkable opening pages in particular dis-orient and re-orient the reader, readying us for the forms of attention-giving to the overlooked and undersung world of mosses which the rest of the book beautifully practices. Poetry, descriptive-evocative prose, memory, memoir, natural history and more all drift and mingle in strikingly new ways in Burnett's book, down at the "boundary layer" where this ancient, modest life flourishes so generatively

Exquisite, luminous and quietly radical ... so electric and so alive. It makes the world more beautiful and dimensional and vibrant - or moreso, it shows the world as it is to our moss-blind, weary eyes with a prose style that is utterly unique and refreshing ... I loved it

This accomplished writer's prose - filled with figurative and tactile imagery - and interspersed poetry powerfully join the human body, mind, and spirit with the Earth

In this luminous book, poetry and dreamy prose weave a strange kind of mossy magic. Taking the “most overlooked of life forms” as her inspiration, Burnett explores intriguing parallels between the lives of mosses and her own… This is an intense book that rewards careful reading. I took my time over it, absorbing a few pages and then letting the beautiful, unforgettable imagery soak in. Burnett is a unique voice and one of our most original nature writers

BBC Countryfile Best Nature Book of the Year

The poet Elizabeth-Jane Burnett has woven a bittersweet travelogue-cum-nature memoir… It thrums with loss.

A masterclass in the art of prose writing, and my favourite nonfiction book in a very long time

Hybridity (of form, subject) is what makes Elizabeth-Jane Burnett's work sing, beguile. Part poet, prose nature writer and woodland psychogeographer, her voice is her own

author of Constellations: Reflections From Life

A subtle, moving celebration of place and connectedness . . . The Grassling brings the sounds, smells and sights of the countryside alive like few other books. Burnett stretches the limits of prose, infusing it with poetic intensity to create a powerful, original voice . . . Her prose is both sinuous and knotty, stretching language to capture what is often beyond words, while slowing down the process of reading, allowing us to savour them

Exquisite . . . needs to be savoured slowly, and then read again. Burnett is breaking new ground as a mixed-heritage English/Kenyan woman connecting so deeply to the historic land of her father's family in the West Country

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

Elizabeth-Jane Burnett is a poet whose work explores environmental issues through creative writing. She is the author of The Grassling, an exploration of memory and natural history, as well as Twelve Words for Moss, which was shortlisted for the 2023 Wainwright Prize.

Glowflake, Rocket, Small Skies, Kind Spears, Marilyn . . . 
 
Moss is known as the living carpet but if you look really closely, it contains an irrepressible light. In Twelve Words for Moss, Elizabeth-Jane Burnett highlights this often forgotten but vital foundation of the plant world with her unique blend of poetry, nature writing and memoir. Making her way through wetlands from Somerset to Country Tyrone, Burnett discovers the hidden vibrancy of these overlooked spaces, renaming her favourite species of moss as she recovers from grieving her father’s death, spurred on by the resilience and tenacity of her plant - and human - friends.

The Grassling

'Deliciously tactile and meditative . . . to read this is to luxuriate in the land, and to connect to it and oneself' Bernardine Evaristo 
 
What fills my lungs is wider than breath could be. It is a place and a language torn, matted and melded; flowered and chiming with bones. That breath is that place and until I get there I will not really be breathing. 
 
Spurred on by her father's declining health and inspired by the history he once wrote of his small Devon village, Elizabeth-Jane Burnett delves through layers of memory, language and natural history to tell a powerful story of how the land shapes us and speaks to us. The Grassling is a book about roots: what it means to belong when the soil beneath our feet is constantly shifting, when the people and places that nurtured us are slipping away.

Burnett manages the delicate feat of maintaining our sense of reverence for the nebulous Anglo-Saxon romanticism..., but twins it with astute scientific nous which never strays into the esoteric. She does this with such joy that we cannot help but want to join in... a heartening read.

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.

A poetic, lyrical tribute to the earth beneath our feet . . . Burnett is one of the freshest voices in the current crop of nature writers

This astonishingly beautiful ode to the sights, sounds and smells of the countryside . . . [evokes] a richly immersive sense of the natural world and our place within it.

Elizabeth-Jane Burnett

A Novel

Two friends, Kenjo and Leah, swoosh through the lush forests at the edge of their village in Kenya. Imitating hornbills and lying on the mossy boulders that line the river, the young girls are watched over by a canopy of ancient trees, whose roots reach into the past, present and future. 
 
But this glittering countryside is quickly becoming a haunting. As the armed rebellion against the British colonial regime intensifies, the forest is subsumed in a destructive conflict, disturbing the profound balance of life it nourishes and knowledge it preserves. Forced from their homes, the friends are separated by oceans and decades. Like the branches that once sheltered them, they may be twisted and buckled by violence, but they will also, somehow, endure. 
 
This tale of courage, survival and restoration captures the healing – and destructive – power of time and unearths the hidden traces it leaves behind.

Elizabeth-Jane Burnett

Books by Elizabeth-Jane Burnett

Articles featuring Elizabeth-Jane Burnett

The best books for nature lovers

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