IN PRAISE OF A BREW
I was slightly wary when I was asked to review this book as I’m more into prose than poetry and (shock horror) my house is a tea free zone! However, I have now embraced poetry (and tea) after reading Elizabeth Darcy Jones Distinguished Leaves.
As one of the world’s few tea poets, Darcy Jones has written a delightful collection of poems celebrating 37 varieties of loose-leaf tea. And about time too as tea was the national beverage that got Britain through two World Wars!
So why are tea and poetry as inseparable as bread and butter? It’s all a matter of sensory arousal, in other words “tea making and drinking, poetry writing and reading, engage all seven senses, (add thinking and feeling to the usual five)”. It’s impossible not to be engaged by the sly humour of Lover’s Tea which “marks the end of steamy sex”, or the stylish imagery of Genmaicha (a green tea with toasted brown rice) that in Darcy Jones imagination is a “beguiling and smiling” Japanese girl “reflected in the sunshine of tea I’m drinking”.
Darcy Jones has put together a deliciously witty and inventive collection with the additional master stroke of an introduction written by actor Nigel Havers, the perfect Earl Grey.
Reviewed by Juliette Foster
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