6.1 Victoria Bennett, ‘All My Wild Mothers’
Hello and welcome to series 6 of the Prompted by Nature podcast! Happy Beltane if you’re listening in real time and are celebrating! I’m Helen and I’m thrilled to be back after a little break. Not much has changed - read a few books, had some time out in Glastonbury, released this season’s newsletter over on Substack - get subscribed if you’re not already! - and generally had time to write and to get back to my own voice.
Action point: No Mow May! If you have a garden, leave the grass to grow for the month of May. If you don’t, why not write to your local councillor and ask them to work with the council to take part in public green spaces. Learn more about ‘no mow May’ and why it’s so great here.
Today’s episode is the perfect conversation to open with. It’s slightly longer than usual as we covered so much ground. We had to re-schedule it a few times due to covid and ended up speaking on the libra full moon - perfect for two chatty libras!
Victoria Bennet lives in Orkney with her husband and son, for whom she is also a full-time carer and home-educator. She is a writer, poet and creative producer, who founded Wild Women Press in 1999 and has spent the last 21 years facilitating creative experiences and curating platforms for women to share ideas, stories, inspirations and actions for positive change. Victoria has a wealth of creative experience and I encourage you to explore her website for all the information.
Victoria’s debut memoir, which we discuss in the episode, All My Wild Mothers, examines motherhood, loss, and the ancient art of wort-cunning (knowledge of medicinal plans and herbs) was long-listed for the Nan Shepherd Prize (2019) and the Penguin WriteNow Programme (2020) as well as winner of the Northern Debut Award.
When she is not juggling home-ed, freelance creative projects, research, study and chronic illness, she can be found howling with the Wild Women, her creative tribe.
In this conversation, we discuss:
What took her to Orkney
The process of writing All My Wild Mothers
The symbiosis of writing and gardening
Creativity and ecology
The impact of her upbringing on her interactions with nature
The structure of the book
Choosing presence in both grief and joy
Combining deep time, long time and momentary time in the writing process
Re-finding creativity after loss
Writing and memory
Wild Women Press and prioritising creative projects
And, two new questions for everyone:
The advice Victoria would give to her younger self
What she’s looking forward to
You can find Victoria on Twitter and Instagram @beewlyd and on her website www.victoriabennett.me I’ve also popped the video created for the book using music inspired by it on the episode page on my website. You can find All My Wild Mothers via any independent bookshop or you can order it from the library. It’s also available in my Prompted by Nature bookshop . And if you’re in a book club, I highly recommend taking Victoria up on her offer of coming along to any online meet-up to talk about the book.
No change with me, I’m on @prompted.by.nature on Instagram, @promptedbynature on Facebook and @promptedxnature on Twitter plus you can subscribe to my Substack newsletter, read the latest on the blog and find out about upcoming events via my website www.promptedbynature.co.uk
Remember to pop back on Tuesday for the writing episode that follows this one.
Happy listening and I’ll speak to you soon. Bye!
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Writing Prompt
Welcome to your writing prompt for my conversation with Victoria Bennett.
Writing prompt, some news and an apology for this episodes tardiness! Thank you for your patience. <3
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When I listened back to the episode with Victoria, what I remember most is her thoughts around the use of time in writing a memoir. She describes the process as engaging three forms of time: deep time, long time and momentary time.
‘I think that that combination of deep time in the Earth and long time in our sense of humanity and momentary time, all exist together, so in memoir writing, memories from my early childhood would sit alongside memories as a mother - with my son - so experiences of present moments and then memories of my mother are in there, and then her memories of her childhood. And so all these memories would kind of interweave with each other and speak to each other. But looking back into memories was a bit like that, finding these pottery shards in a garden because I would start and I would look back and think, ‘that's a terrible memory’, and then it's like, ‘that's a wonderful bit of pottery!’ So I'd find these moments that would be as alive and as present as the one I was in, and their stories that they had would be as present and and as revealing. I suppose if I'd written it all off as being terrible I wouldn't have bothered…’
The invitation here then, is to create three pieces: one that engages with deep time, one with long time and one with momentary time. These could take the form of journal entries, be three pieces of free writing, poems on the themes or something completely different. This is the sort of thing I like to write about in my morning pages as I find that in that liminal spaces between night and day, I’m the most alert to more abstract concepts such as time.
Enjoy this one and let me know how you get on if you use it.
Happy writing!
Helen x
