Jenny Elliott

Jenny Elliott Mushrooms

Cellular mavericks, they come from their own kingdom, taste of umami. * Mycelium marvel forms pinhead primordium; it devours dead trees. * Delicate tissue of interwoven hyphae, white buttons push through. * Scales on a cap, ruptured universal veil; karma chameleon. * Pearl-like kokeshi, their little lost daughters make rings in the dew. * Devil’s fruit portals; ancient underground partners, for better or worse. * This pine owes its life to a mycorrizal connection, its fungal nurse-maid. * Fungophobia. Cap, stem, spore-producing gills — guilty, not guilty. Jenny Elliott, the poet, lives on a farm near St. Andrews in Fife, where she keeps Shetland sheep and runs The Shed Press; a small press, producing mainly handmade poetry pamphlets and cards. In 2016, one of these pamphlets, Makkin-wires, won The Callum Macdonald Memorial Award. Her poems have also appeared in various magazines and anthologies and her collaborations with other artists have resulted in a number of exhibitions and publications. She has also worked as a free-range egg farmer, an environmental chemist, a flower preserver, a hospital teacher and a teacher of sensoryimpaired teenagers. She currently plans to restock The Shed with new products including plant-dyed woolly goods.

Susan Wilson, artist and printmaker, was born in Dalry, Galloway and now lives in Fife. Her work is mainly in etching and reveals her interest in landscape, its surface patterns, its geology and fossil record. Inspiration also comes from plant life and her etchings of vegetables illustrate One Old Onion and other poems by the poet Jenny Elliott. This is her third such collaboration, her first being with Bill Duncan with whom she produced The Hirta Portfolio about the history, culture and evacuation of St Kilda; the second working with Colin Herd on an artist’s book entitled blots for ‘The Written Image’, a joint project between Edinburgh Printmakers and the Scottish Poetry Library.

StAnza brings poetry to audiences and enables encounters with poetry through events and projects in Scotland and beyond, especially their annual spring festival in St Andrews. www.stanzapoetry.org Facebook: stanzapoetry Instagram: @stanzapoetry