Edna St. Vincent Millay: Shedworker

Edna St. Vincent Millay- who wrote 'My candle burns at both ends; it will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends— It gives a lovely light!' - was one of the most famous poets in America when she moved to her new home, Steepletop, aged 33 in March 1925. As well as the main farmhouse building, the property including hundreds of acres of land and various outbuildings.

Among them was a small outbuilding in a blueberry field which she claimed as her writing cabin, and she worked there - often with her German shepherd, Altair, as a companion - until  it burned down in 1928. Rather than give up on the shedworking lifestyle, she simply built another (pictured top) on the hill behind the house.

This was a simple garden office, constructed of unpainted pine boards, and surrounded by white pines planted to commemorate her mother's life, while around the cabin she also planted daffodils. It was modelled on George Bernard Shaw's revolving writing hut in Hertfordshire which she had visited. She wrote inside for three to four hours a day, inspired by the lovely environment around her - during her time at Steepletop she wrote several poetry collections, an opera libretto, and translated Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal.

The interior was furnished with a wooden desk and chair, stove, wing chair, and, a nice touch this, a chaise longue. Much of the estate has undergone conservation work by the charity that now runs it, and this includes the cabin which has been kept uncluttered.

Photo by Daniel Case

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Wordsworth's writing hut summer house

This marvellously evocative photo of William Wordsworth's writing hut at Rydal Mount was taken by friend of Shedworking photographer and writer Chris Routledge. Of equally high calibre is this guest post written exclusively for us by Kira Welland a PhD student at the University of Cumbria in Ambleside whose research (‘The spatial contexts of Rydal Mount and how these influence the influence the writings of Mary, Dorothy, and Dora Wordsworth’), explores the literary heritage and architectural history of Rydal Mount:

At the head of the Rydal Mount gardens sits a poet’s throne. This is the Summer House, a garden hut that holds gravitas far beyond its humble size. It was here that William Wordsworth (1770-1850) would compose his poetry. However, this quaint writing hut not only provided the location for poesy; it was also a source of inspiration.

Wordsworth lived at Rydal Mount from 1813 until his death in 1850, and he was responsible for defining the character of its gardens. The terraces, built to mimic walking in the fells, were largely landscaped by Wordsworth during the 1820s.

Connecting two of these terraces, it is likely Wordsworth built the Summer House around the same time. Certainly by 1826, Wordsworth wrote a poem on the prospect of being evicted from Rydal Mount, and intended to inscribe it on the door of the Summer House:

The Massy Ways, carried across these heights
By Roman perseverance, are destroyed, -
Or hidden underground, like sleeping worms.
How then to hope that Time will spare
This humble walk? Yet on the mountain’s side
A Poet’s hand first shaped it; and the steps
Of that same Bard – repeated to and fro
At morn, at noon, and under moonlight skies
Through the vicissitudes of many a year -
Forbade the weeds to creep o’er its grey line.
William Wordsworth, ‘The Massy Ways, carried across these heights’, lines 1-10. 

As the current structure differs slightly from Wordsworth’s day, the Summer House is now open on both sides to allow direct access from one terrace to another. Constructed from slate and previously lined with pinecones, it appears as an organic feature of the fellside, reflecting Wordsworth’s Romantic philosophy. With the doorways framing picturesque views towards Wansfell and Loughrigg, the little hut has big prospects, and it is easy to see how one could be enraptured in poesy from such a place.

The Summer House inspired compositions beyond those of its maker. Maria Jane Jewsbury (1800-1833) first visited Rydal Mount in 1825, and was captivated by the house and grounds. The resulting work ‘A Poet’s Home’ was published in The Literary Magnet in 1826, and featured the following lines referring to the Summer House:

Winding walk, and sheltered nook,
For student grave, and graver book;
Or a bird-like bower, perchance,
Fit for maiden and romance.
Maria Jane Jewsbury, ‘A Poet’s Home’, lines 9-12.

Jewsbury expresses the versatility of the Summer House, both in its purpose for Wordsworth’s philosophical ponderings, but also as a sanctuary. The ‘sheltered nook’ evokes a familial intimacy fitting for the small hut, particularly when paired with ideas of youth and romance in the following lines. Located at the highest point in the grounds yet shielded by magnificent trees, it is a paradoxical place: small, but grand; sheltered, but imposing; solemn, but whimsical.

Two hundred years later, the Summer House continues its contradictory existence. It encapsulates the sublimity of the Lake District’s landscape, simultaneously lofty and snug. The Summer House endures as a venue and source for creativity, captured in Chris Routledge’s recent photograph. To use Wordsworth’s own words, this hut prevails for “... those pure Minds that reverence the Muse”, and will hopefully continue to do so for generations to come.

For the past few years, Kira has worked as Rydal Mount’s House Guide and Administrator, and now works for the Wordsworth Conference Foundation. She is in the process of creating her own blog recording her research journey, and is also active on Instagram, Bluesky, and
LinkedIn.

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Poet Laureate Simon Armitage's The Shed podcast returns

 

 

Excellent news, arguably the world's best shed-based podcast is back in business. After the BBC mystifyingly decided not to renew Simon Armitage's series, he has quite rightly decided to simply carry on regardless, with Yorkshire Tea as his podcast partner. Here's what he says:

"I’m delighted to announce that I’m opening up the doors of my garden shed to welcome in half a dozen guests for a chinwag. One at a time, mind - there isn’t much room in there, even when I’ve moved the lawnmower. Feel free to put your ear to one of the many holes in the wall and eavesdrop my natterings with Self Esteem, Susie Dent, Richard Hawley and others who’ve ventured into the Pennine uplands."

It's available in the usual places such as Apple and Spotify, with Frank Skinner - himself a poetry podcaster now - the first interviewee of the new series.

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Louise Kennedy: shedworker

A nice piece by writer Louise Kennedy, author most recently of the novel Trespasses, about her garden office on LitHub, A Shed of One’s Own: Louise Kennedy on the Blissful Semi-Solitude of Her Backyard Writing Space. Here's a snippet:

Spending so much time in my shed, it’s not a surprise that things around me made their way into the books. The basket on top of the bookcase belonged to my aunt when she was a student and inspired the one the protagonist of Trespasses, Cushla Lavery, carries to school and to the Irish classes. Books that I took from the shelves appear in the book too: Jude the Obscure, The Black Prince, the poetry of Ciaran Carson. A box of family snaps gave me the idea for a short story told in photographs. And just being in the garden has helped me understand the ways in which nature can be used to convey the passage of time in fiction.

Louise also writes about her shedworking life on the Short Story Award site. Again, a brief excerpt:

I write in a shed in my garden. The previous owner was one of those people who click your back in when you put it out. She used it as a clinic. We kept surf boards and garden tools in there and cleared it out when I started writing. A couple of weeks into lockdown, my daughter made the mistake of saying she was bored, so I scored a tin of grey paint and put her up a ladder. It looks cute now. Inside, it is painted white, with a recycled paper floor from Ikea and a desk with bookshelves apparatus my sister was getting rid of. The window overlooks the compost heap and two wheelie bins, which is probably just as well; a prettier view would distract me. I work in it all year, but sometimes, in winter, mice get in and I retreat to the kitchen.

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Book the writing hut at the Poetry Pharmacy's Physic Garden

We're big fans of the new writing hut at the Poetry Pharmacy's Physic Garden in Bishop's Castle run by poet Deborah Alma. We reported last month about how it had hit a crowdfunding target and were delighted to see early images of what it looks like inside. If you also like the look of it, you can now book a slot in the hut (the Physic Garden if only open by appointment) - as well as the space to write, it also has supplies to make your own herbal infusion as well as a lovely view across the garden and the rooftops of the town. And it's free (although donations are of course always welcome and help keen the garden looking shipshape).

And here's what it looks like from outside.

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Physic garden writer's hut fully funded

We're delighted to report that friend of Shedworking Deborah Alma - who runs the world's first walk-in Poetry Pharmacy in Bishop's Castle - has hit her kickstarter target to create a modern Poetry Physic Garden inspired by the gardens cultivated by mediaeval apothecaries. This will include a writer's hut - pictured above - in which visitors can write poetry, and also enable four horticultural students from Winterbourne House and Gardens to set up a garden with poetry threaded throughout at BBC Gardener's World live later this month at the NEC in Birmingham. 

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Malcolm Guite: shedworker

We've touched on poet, priest, and musician Malcolm Guite's shed poetry previously, so it's nice to actually get a look around his writing shed, pictured above, which he calls The Temple of Peace. He gives us a tour, and a reading of his latest Arthurian tale, in the video below.

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Ian Patterson: shedworker

Poet, academic, and translator Ian Patterson has a splendid writing shed which also houses his poetry library. In the video below from about the 55 second mark, you can see inside courtesy of his wife and fellow writer Olivia Laing who lovingly describes it as "the essence of him".

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Shed-Fever: garden office poetry

Another fine example to add to the folder of garden office poetry, Shed-Fever (inspired by John Masefield's Sea Fever) by poet, priest, and musician Malcolm Guite from his collection After Prayer. It's also featured in an excellent piece Guite wrote for the Church Times and he talks about his own writing hut in a separate CT article here. Here's a snippet:

I have a little hut at the bottom of the garden, which is called (more in hope than expectation) the Temple of Peace. I borrowed the name from Gladstone; for, in any house he inhabited, that was the name that he gave to his study. Not that my little hexagonal hut, which is, to be honest, no more than a glorified gazebo, would stand comparison with the spacious rooms, well stocked bookshelves, and lovely big desks that furnished the various “Temples of Peace” enjoyed by the Grand Old Man.

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Robert Burns: shedworker

 

This is the rural folly inspired by anchorites cells turned stone summerhouse known as The Hermitage in Friars Carse, near Dumfries in Scotland. It was built by a Captain Robert Riddell who was a friend of the writer Robert Burns and who lent it to him as a garden office writing shed in which to write poetry. Among works Burns composed here was the eponymous 'Written In Friars Carse Hermitage' which begins:

Thou whom chance may hither lead,

Be thou clad in russet weed,

Be thou deckt in silken stole,

Grave these maxims on they soul.

Burns also used his 'diamond' pen to write on the window pane and liked the spot so much he occasionally overnighted here. After Burns fell out with Riddell (probably over something he said about Riddell's wife during one of their drinking sessions in the hermitage), the building fell into disrepair. Below is what it looked like in 1882, half a dozen years after some restoration work. It was further restored in 2009, although there is some debate about how original the building is and its first location.

  

And in the video below you can see inside the hermitage.

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William Wordsworth's moss hut garden office

On a tour of Scotland in 1803, poet William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy saw a building Dorothy described as a “hay-stack scooped out”. It was a simple circular, domed wooden hut, lined with ‘fog’, the Scots language term for moss.When they got back to their Dove Cottage home in the Lake District, they built their own version with marvellous views over the fells and it was here that they entertained and William wrote poetry, including his masterpiece The Prelude. Like the hut they had seen in Scotland, it was lined with moss and covered outside with heather with a long seat around the interior - William described it as like a "wren’s nest" and even wrote a little poem about it:

No whimsy of the purse is here,
No Pleasure-House forlorn;
Use, Comfort do this roof endear;
A tributary Shed to cheer
The little Cottage that is near,
To help it and adorn.

Bad news, the hut was demolished by a later owner, the writer Thomas de Quincey and there are no images of it surviving. Good news, in 2020 a replacement hut was built by designer Charlie Whinney (featured previously on Shedworking) in collaboration with natural world campaigners somewhere-nowhere out of Cumbrian oak at Dove Cottage along the same nest-like lines as the original (see images above). It looks tremendous and it's hoped that it will inspire new generations of writers. All the pandemic stuff has rather got in the way of a proposed tour of the moss hut in the region, but it's in situ at Dove Cottage and there are hopes that once things improve it can hit the road in 2021.

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Cantilevered writing studio

An absolutely gorgeous stone and oak writing studio by American architects Eric J Smith (where you can see many more photos) in Connecticut for retired banker and poet John Barr. Built close to his home and cantilevered over a slope, it is clad in bluestone and fieldstone to fit in the with the surrounding countryside. Features include a geothermal heating system and a corridor of oak bookshelves (which houses his large poetry collection), as well as a small kitchen, bathroom, and composting lavatory. There is also a rooftop terrace accessed via a wooden staircase.

Photographs by Durston Saylor.

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How To Give Your Child A Lifelong Love Of Reading published today

My latest book, published by The British Library, is out today - although I've written it, there are also lots of mini-essays from famous children's writers such as Michael Rosen, Jacqueline Wilson, and Abi Elphinstone. It also features reading lists by age and subject from the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE). Available online from your local indie bookseller as well as from the usual suspects. Here's the official bumph:

Full of age-appropriate reading suggestions and ideas to encourage tricky readers, discover how to instill one of life’s greatest skills: curiosity and a lifelong love of learning. Complete with dedicated contributions from Jacqueline Wilson, Michael Rosen, Abi Elphinstone, Cressida Cowell, Hollie McNish, Ken Wilson-Max and Julia Eccleshare, this title taps into an increasing concern about anti-screen activities and return to traditional forms of creative thinking.

How do you create an active reader? Why is reading good for creativity? Why is it vital for teaching the next generation resilience and positive mental health?

In the digital age of never-ending screen time you could argue that the power of books has diminished. But while screens have changed the act of reading, Alex Johnson believes reading is even more important, and that people value books more than ever. This is visible in the sales of printed special editions, the revival in reading aloud, the increased interest in poetry anthologies and the rescuing of ‘lost words’ from obscurity.

But the problem is: with so many competing distractions, which are the best books for children to read and how can we access them? How do we get children to start reading? And how can we encourage them to be curious? How can we encourage their reading and maintain their interest? In this book of practical advice, Alex Johnson brings his tremendous enthusiasm and informed passion to answer these questions, and many more, to ensure a new generation of bookworms are whisked away to new worlds and essential discoveries.

Ten Poems about Sheds

One for all shedworkers' bookshelves, this is part of Candlestick Press's excellent longrunning series of short anthologies which are half poetry pamphlet, half greetings card. This one includes work from the likes of Kathleen Jamie, Fleur Adcock, and Derek Mahon. Here's what they say about it:

Sheds have come a long way since the man-cave cliché. These days, a shed is a far more democratic place – somewhere that symbolises the privacy and space that we all need. John Greening’s wonderfully varied selection of poems explores sheds from every imaginable angle. The poems take us to a child’s hiding place, a treasury of exotic implements and rich aromas and a retreat in which to remember the past. Derek Mahon’s fêted poem ‘A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford’ creates a mysterious inner world which seems to exist outside time. A shed may just be a place to keep the lawnmower, or it may be somewhere to escape to in order to write or paint. Sometimes it’s a haven in which to daydream when the house is full of noise and bustle. This enchanting selection leads the reader quietly into private worlds and makes the perfect gift for every shed-lover.

 Available from the usual places and also direct from Candlestick Press.
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Brian Bilston's poetry writing shed: Diary of a Somebody

Here is the excellent front cover of Brian Bilston's new novel Diary of a Somebody, designed by Jon McNaught, which features a writing shed through the seasons. It's out in June and we'd strongly recommend investing in a copy. Here's some bumph about it from the publisher (more details here):

Part tender love story, part murder mystery, part coruscating description of a wasted life, and interspersed with some of the funniest poems about the mundane and the profound, Diary of a Somebody is the most original novel you will read this or any year.

— Brian Bilston (@brian_bilston) June 4, 2019

And here's his excellent poem, Shed Envy.

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Jizz - new poetry collection from John 'Shedman' Davies

A supporter of Shedworking from the beginning, John 'Shedman' Davies has an excellent new and selected collection out from Kingston University Press called Jizz (a term used by birdwatchers to describe the overall impression of a bird from various features such as posture, size, and location - in the US the book will be called 'Nest'). As with his previous works, John includes shed mentions but landscape also provides a major focus as does everyday life. Our favourites are Gardener's Question Time ("Astride the shed, he pulls the roof felt up") and Walden Life, and it's good to see old favourite Maximum Shed in there, which is worth the cost of the book alone. Another triumph from Shedman and a must for all shedworkers' bookshelves.

Here is John below in full performance flow.

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Garden office poetry

There's not a huge amount of garden office poetry so it's always a pleasure to find an addition to the canon. Here's the first stanza from The Writing Shed by Steve Tanham:

Will I write in here as snows arrive

Locked eyes and fingers frenzied?

Imagined places, chattering teeth

With windows needing mended

You can read the rest of it (there's a nice twist in the tale at the end...) at Steve's Sun in Gemini site here. ---------------------------------------------------------

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Garden office poetry: Deborah Levy

Here is writer Deborah Levy reading her poem 'An amorous discourse in the suburbs of hell'  in her garden office which features prominently at the beginning, middle and end.

Deborah Levy AN AMOROUS DISCOURSE IN THE SUBURBS OF HELL from Chameleoneye Films on Vimeo.

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National Poetry Day: Brian Bilston on shed envy

There is a gradually growing canon of shed-based poems to which the popular poet Brian Bilston has added a blinder. You can see his latest work on Twitter and buy an excellent selection of his poems which was crowdfunded on Unbound.

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National Poetry Day: Shedworking poem

Here is Where Earwigs Dare by the marvellous Matt Harvey, arguably still the finest poem ever written about shedworking:

A silver trail across the monitor;
Fresh mouse-droppings beneath the swivel-chair;
The view obscured by rogue japonica.
Released into the wild, where earwigs dare -

You first went freelance - and then gently feral.
You worked from home - and then wandered out again,
Roughed it with spider, ant, shrew, blackbird, squirrel
In your own realm, your micro-vatican.

No name conveys exactly what it is -
Chalet? Gazebo? You were not misled
By studios, snugs, garden offices,
Workshops or outhouses. A shed's a shed -

And proud of it. You wouldn't want to hide it -
Wifi-enable rain-proof wooden box.
A box to sit in while you think outside it -
Self-rattling cage, den, poop-deck, paradox,

Hutch with home-rule, cramped cubicle of freedom,
Laboratory, thought-palace, bodger's bower,
Plot both to sow seeds and to go to seed in,
Cobwebbed, Cuprinol-scented, Seat of Power.

Matt's excellent collection The Hole in the Sum of my Parts is published by the Poetry Trust, nicely illustrated by David Hughes, and I would urge all readers to snap up a copy now. You can buy direct from Matt's site shop here. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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