Alison Brackenbury

Born in 1953, I grew up in a small village in the Lincolnshire countryside: far away, as people tend to say, from many places... I come from a long line of skilled farmworkers, home workers and servants: 'Horse Keepers', shepherds, 'Lacemakers' and cooks. I won a scholarship to study English at Oxford, and moved along the limestone to Gloucestershire.

I am married with a daughter. I scrambled through a series of jobs: including librarian and accounts clerk, For twenty-three years, I was 50% of the workforce in my husband's tiny metal finishing business. (I still have the boilersuit.)

Any spare time was divided between writing and a series of shaggy, unaffordable and very long-lived ponies, kept on the hills...

I am now retired. I have published ten collections of poems, noted for horses, hares, history - and, alas, some sharp reflections on global warming. These have won two major awards from the Society of Authors. My Selected Poems, ‘Gallop’, were published in 2019 by Carcanet. My latest collection - noted for its birds! - is 'Thorpeness', also published by Carcanet in 2022.

'Thorpeness' was featured on BBC Radio 4's arts programme, 'Front Row'. I have been lucky enough to do a great deal of broadcasting. Two of my countryside scripts have featred as 'Choices' in the broadsheet newspapers and in the 'Radio Times'.' Delicious'! commented Radio 4's 'Pick of the Week'.

I have now published the prose book I have been working towards all my life'. 'Village' is non-fiction, a blend of memory and startling research discoveries: a story of survival in six houses, from the tiniest cottage, under the walnut tree, to the Manor on the hill. You will meet Mary Ann, accused of three murders by witchcraft, and Emma, who has a lift home from the Commercial Inn every Saturday night with the saddler, Mr Weatherhogg... in a wheelbarrow.

You can find news and photographs from the villagers on my blog,

and on my social media accounts (which have many photographs of trees and tadpoles)...

Blog: please search for ALISON BRACKENBURY BLOG

(This has a Contact page, if you'd like to send me a message)

And please simply search for ALISON BRACKENBURY

to find me on Instagram, Facebook, X (formerly Twitter) and Bluesky!

Oh, and on TikTok - where I am alisonbrackenbury3, with a rather dark logo of a ruined village cottage - a childhood photo!

I am rather good at posting lovely videos of lit grasses and absolutely incapable of posting anything

which will promote my books! Luckily, I think that wild grasses matter - come and watch them blow in the summer wind...

And do get in touch! I am always happy to hear from readers!