‘Lucy Burnett: many-minded poet, extraordinary photographer & fellrunner’ (Jonathan Skinner, 2021)
Hello, and thanks for visiting my website! My name is Lucy Burnett, and I’m a freelance writer and photographer, researcher, outdoor activities professional, and a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Lancaster University.
I’ve got four published books – two poetry collections with Carcanet Press (Leaf Graffiti 2013 and Tripping Over Clouds 2019), one poetry collection with Guillemot Press (one step sideways and 13 down 2021) and a ‘hybrid’ work of travel writing with Knives Forks and Spoons Press (Through the Weather Glass 2016). I’m currently working on a new collection called The Long Wood which explores questions of childhood trauma and my relationship with my mother in the context of place – specifically the area where I grew up, in the environs of the car crash site which formed my first memory. I am also working on a new work of creative non-fiction called Waiting for Potatoes which draws parallels with Beckett’s Waiting for Godot as a means of telling the story of a year I spent potato farming in Spain.
Over the last few years I’ve been developing a project called Scree: A Digital Guidebook to the Lake District fells. This is a guidebook of experimental hiking and writing / art routes in the Lake District, which are designed to challenge how we traditionally think about landscape and environment. Previous outreach projects include an installation tour of my second book (Through the Weather Glass) around public facing spaces such as shopping centres, service stations and libraries) with the view of asking people to consider their creative relationship with climate change. I’m also a fine art / landscape photographer – I’m currently in the process of designing a new writing & photography website which will include a more extended photography portfolio than is available here. In the meantime you can also see recent examples of my work on my project website www.scree.uk.
Prior to my appointment at Lancaster University, I worked as Director of StAnza, the longstanding annual international poetry festival in St Andrews. During my tenure I framed the festival as a key intervention in the practice of poetry. I have also taught at Salford, Strathclyde, Leeds Beckett and Cumbria Universities. My research specialises in the relationship betewen literature and the environment, with a specific focus on the relationship between writing and climate change. I continue to develop this research as it relates to my artistic practice, and to provide tutoring and mentoring for organisations such as Arvon and Dadafest. Before enterting academia, I worked as an environmental campaigner for Friends of the Earth and Ramblers Scotland, including playing a key role in the Scottish access legisation. I’m a qualified mountain leader, and have a small mountain guiding business which sits alongside my art, and I get out in the fells – running, hiking, making art or on my bike – at every opportunity.
My practice traverses artistic boundaries, characterised by a playful experimental aesthetic, and with environmental themes a common preoccupation. Recent work derives from an interest in the potential of abstraction, understood as the raw unformed matter (of possibility) from which the world , and ourselves, are reciprocally formed (and unformed), and an interest in how to explore trauma in writing. Over recent years my interest in different artistic practices has led me to work across and between disciplines and forms. I also love collaborating, and have worked with OBRA Theatre Co on co-writing a work of poetry for physical theatre and developing a methodology for ‘teaching’ poetry through movement. During 2019 I worked with internationally renowned Kattak dancer Mitul Sengupta as part of the Arts Council funded Dancing with Words project.
Please don’t hesitate to get in touch about my work, to approach me for potential projects or collaborations, or to purchase books.
‘Lucy Burnett’s poems involve us in a vivid experience of the self in landscape and language, moving playfully but with an intensity that at times leaves us breathless and amazed…And what fabulous photos – she should be winning awards.’ —Grevel Lindop
‘There is something of Dylan Thomas in the exuberant wordplay and feeling for place, and something of W.S. Graham in her exploration of language and landscape as the twin territories within which we live… Burnett’s subjects are serious ones, but her poems are joyful to read, revelling in the endless possibilities of language and of the world itself, ‘in whatever colour you might come’.’ —Helen Tookey
lucy burnett 