Wendy Pratt – författare

'Remarkable'OBSERVER'Deeply profound… this is no ordinary memoir' THE TIMES‘Astounding’ ADAM FARRER‘Brave and luminous’ SARAH LANGFORD‘Mesmerising’ POLLY ATKIN‘Beautifully written’ YORKSHIRE POST‘Steadfastly honest’ GEOGRAPHICAL A memoir of grief, nature and ancestry in rural Yorkshire. I am setting out on a pilgrimage through an ancient landscape. I will begin at my daughter’s grave. Paleolake Flixton is an extinct lake in North Yorkshire. Human occupation of the site dates back thousands of years to prehistoric times. Over the millennia, the vast lake disappeared, turning to wetland and peaty fields. Today all that is left of it is a watermark.Wendy Pratt brings the reader on a pilgrimage around the ghost lake, to locations that have acted as journey markers in her own life. While traversing forests and fenland, she reflects on the process of finding belonging in nature as a woman who exists in a series of liminal spaces – as a working-class writer, an infertile woman in a fertile world and a bereaved mother in a society focused on children.An early draft of The Ghost Lake was longlisted for the 2021 Nan Shepherd Prize.‘In this lyric memoir, award-winning poet Pratt explores the land­scape of the Yorkshire Moors, and the ancient lost lake of Flixton, weaving together nature writing with an exploration of grief, belonging and the lives of rural working-class people. THE BOOKSELLER‘There are some autobiographical writers who speak of utilising nature’s healing properties to overcome life challenges without fully acknowledging the role of luck in their trajectories. Not infrequently these writers become cultural spokespeople for or representatives of a demographic that they are actually no longer a part of, leaving those who are still grappling with their plights feeling as though it’s a personal failing that they can’t make their way out the same mires. This is a very different sort of book, a steadfastly honest one that views nature as a refuge rather than a cure. Many should find solace here. And others will simply gain pleasure from the descriptions of the archaeological finds unearthed from Yorkshire’s rich black peaty soils’GEOGRAPHICAL

'Remarkable'OBSERVER'Deeply profound… this is no ordinary memoir' THE TIMES‘Astounding’ ADAM FARRER‘Brave and luminous’ SARAH LANGFORD‘Mesmerising’ POLLY ATKIN‘Beautifully written’ YORKSHIRE POST‘Steadfastly honest’ GEOGRAPHICAL A memoir of grief, nature and ancestry in rural Yorkshire. I am setting out on a pilgrimage through an ancient landscape. I will begin at my daughter’s grave. Paleolake Flixton is an extinct lake in North Yorkshire. Human occupation of the site dates back thousands of years, but today, all that is left is a watermark.Wendy Pratt brings readers on a pilgrimage around its periphery, to locations that have acted as journey markers in her own life. While traversing forests and fenland, she finds refuge in nature. The Ghost Lake is a lyrical meditation on local history, changing landscapes, and the lives and legacies of rural working-class people.

Blackbird Singing at Dusk by Wendy Pratt is an illuminating and lyrical exploration of place within nature; of Northern rural working-class lives, the female body, and of the ancestors and history still close to the surface, just beneath where our feet touch the earth. Moving through both landscapes and human lives, these poems weigh the impact of loss and consider the circular, deep nature of time itself; how lifetimes can be measured – whether in jackdaw, beech tree or even glacier time.From the silent sentinels of boulders to peels of birdsong “stopping the world”, Wendy Pratt’s archaeological attention to detail draws us into an intimate elegy, mindful of the connections of earth and people, the living and the dead. The wide horizons of her poems weave the heartbeat of working days and the rich inheritances of love in scribbled notes and domestic prayers – all that remains behind long after, marking us with grief for a lost parent or a baby daughter. These remarkable poems of solace consider what it is to endure and find reassurance in a rural land “quartered by barn owls and kestrels,” with its ever-shifting seasons and skies, its permanence of stone and soil.