Alison Brackenbury
- stephenmoore2013
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
As part of my project on Gloucestershire Poets, I had the pleasure of meeting and photographing Alison Brackenbury. I was welcomed into Alison's home and had chance to spend some time hearing from Alison about her work.
Alison Brackenbury was born in 1953, from a long line of skilled servants and farmworkers. She has published ten poetry collections. Her most recent poetry publications are her Selected Poems, ‘Gallop’, and her new collection, ‘Thorpeness’, both from Carcanet Press.
Alison also broadcasts frequently on BBC Radio 4. She can be heard, via BBC Sounds, reading one of her poems, a gripping ghost story from the Civil War, on the poetry programme ‘The Verb’, from June 1, 2025. Alison’s poem is the second item:
She has just published ‘Village’, her only prose book, with true stories of cheerful survival, especially of women, from 1841 to 1971. ‘Village’ is set in six houses, beginning with the home of Mary Ann, our last suspected ‘witch’: the village’s tiniest cottage, shadowed by the great walnut tree...
‘Absolutely delightful... generous, funny, moving...’
Melissa Harrison, award-winning novelist.
‘Village’ can only be bought online. The paperback costs £9.99, and the Kindle/phone/computer version a mere 99 pence! You can join the villagers’ eventful lives, up Hollowgate Hill and down Long Lane, here:
Alison, who has lived in Gloucestershire for almost 50 years, has now returned to writing poetry. Here is a seasonal poem, set in a sheltered spot high on the Gloucestershire hills. It is taken from Alison Brackenbury’s Selected Poems, ‘Gallop’, (Carcanet, 2019).
At Needlehole
How lovely the land lies in October,
Still as the moon.
The new wheat is planted.
The drivers are gone
To pile up their wood
Or be soothed by a screen.
The felled tree is sawn,
The robin’s cross cry
Now liquid and long,
Uncannily high.
The cold finds my fingers.
The moon finds the sky.
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