Meredith McKinney

Let’s start with the cover —an intimate portrait, very close-up, very much the feel of the whole collection. Can’t get much more grounded than lichen…Perfect cover for the book, and chosen with care, like the title. Intimacy and groundedness carry all the way through in fact…

That’s the lovely double intimacy of the book: we are married, not just to each other but to the ground. It starts from the ground up. The first long section is simply “here”. Since this is a personal tour I’ll just say it’s full of things I personally love — every reader will find their own. Lovely sense of women’s space, most particularly the portraits of her beloved octagon where Nicola writes, its books, its inhabitants (a spider), its being. You could say the whole book is a kind of woman’s space, in fact….