Penny Boxall, the Wytham Woods Writer in Residence for 2023-24, has published Decomposing Poems – a volume of poetry written during her residency on the themes of soil and layers of history.
With illustrations by Sally Dod, the volume – the second in the Woodland Words series – is now available via the University’s online shop.
Often ignored and trodden underfoot, soil nonetheless nourishes us, supports us and has a multitude of meanings – it’s teeming with living things but is also associated with death and decay; it eventually covers everything and erases it from memory, but it also forms a near-permanent historical archive for those who know how to read it.
Last autumn, Penny printed some of the poems on perishable materials including apples and biodegradable paper, and left them in selected locations around Wytham Woods, where they’ve since been returning to the soil in a natural process of decomposition.
