Useful Verses

Richard Osmond's debut collection Useful Verses follows in the tradition of the best nature writing, and is as much taken up with the human world as the natural, the present as the past. Osmond, a professional forager, has a deep knowledge of flora and fauna as they appear in both natural and human history, as they are depicted in folklore and herbal. However, he views them through a wholly contemporary lens; chamomile is discussed through quantum physics, wood sorrel through online gambling, ants through social media and mugwort through a traffic cone. In each case Osmond offers an arresting and new perspective, and makes the hidden world that lives and breathes beside us vividly part of our own. This is a fiercely inventive, darkly witty and brilliantly observed debut -- and one as far from any quaint and conservative notion of 'nature poetry' as it is possible to get.