Harvest

Harvest was forged in an emotional melting-pot. The author was walking one morning in the grounds of Fulbourn Psychiatric Hospital near Cambridge, having been held under a section of the Mental Health Act. This meant that she could not leave the hospital grounds. But the grounds were extensive and from the edge of the gardens she could see Fulbourn windmill standing on the brow of Fulbourn Hill. She reached deeply inside herself and came up with a poem which, though she had always written, came from a place more serious and resonant than ever before.Gradually, other poems followed, detailing her interaction with the mental health system and the consoling connection she felt with the natural world. On her release, she finished the collection: songs, sonnets, hymns and ballads, a readable variety of responses to harsh experience.