I got this through the post on Tuesday, a most beautiful book – Pharmapoetica by Chris McCabe and Maria Vlotides. It unfolds to show two conjoined booklets, one of Chris’ poems and the other of Maria’s herbal notes – very knowledgeable and witty – both illustrated by Maria’s beautiful photographs. It is published by Pedestrian Publishing. It’s not cheap as it is a limited edition but it is gorgeous. The poetry extends the range of what I thought was possible with herb poems – Chris McCabe doesn’t always write directly about the herb in question, but uses it as a way of describing his relationship with his young son. Great stuff.

And while I was reading his comments about the book and the process of writing it, which you can find on his blog here, I came across a reference to a project I’d heard about when it was in development – the Herbarium, run by the Urban Physic garden in Southwark. This project also resulted in a booklet – long since out of print, but you can still read the poems  on their web-page.