Our guest today is author and poet, Victoria Bennett. Her writing spans poetry, memoir and nonfiction, she has written and talked extensively on grief, care, and writing through times of change. Victoria is a firm believer in
everyone’s right to write their own story, and she has dedicated much of her working life to nurturing spaces where people can do that.
In 1999, she founded the internationally celebrated Wild Women Press, an inclusive space focusing on nature, connection and creativity.
Her debut memoir, All My Wild Mothers, is an intimate story of motherhood, a handbook on survival and a testimony to radical hope. Weaving of memoir and herbal folklore, it is a tale of grief and the transformation that
can happen when we reconnect with the wild beneath our feet and it has something to teach us about resilience, love, and the power of joyful resistance.
At seven months pregnant, Victoria Bennett learns that her sister has died in a canoeing accident. In that moment, her life changes.
Five years later, and struggling with the demands of motherhood, grief and fulltime care, Victoria and her family move to a new social housing estate in rural Cumbria. Here, in the rubble of a former industrial site, she and her
young son begin to grow a wild apothecary garden: daisy, for resilience; dandelion, for strength against adversity; sow thistle, to lift melancholy; and borage, to bring hope in dark and difficult times.
Gradually they discover that sometimes life grows, not in spite of what is broken, but because of it.
She now lives in Orkney, with her husband and son. When not juggling writing, fulltime care, and genetic illness, she can be found where the wild weeds grow, growing her apothecary garden