Jade Cuttle (University of Cambridge PhD student and BBC New Generation Thinker) has turned her current English Literature research into a BBC Radio 3 Essay titled ‘Digging for Words’.  ‘The Essay’, written and presented by Jade, airs on BBC Radio 3 tonight at 9.45pm or is available online now on BBC Sounds: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00298fx

‘Digging for Words’ is inspired by Jade’s PhD that looks at nature poets of colour, writing in Britain 2012-2025, under the supervision of Robert Macfarlane at Clare Hall, Cambridge; celebrating the upcoming publication of Britain’s first-ever anthology in this field Nature Matters: Vital Poems from the Global Majority.

More specifically, ‘Digging for Words’ translates fieldwork techniques that Jade has learned through her passion for metal detecting into the field of literature, in order to unearth evidence of an overlooked poetic tradition.  If we dig beneath the ‘golden daffodils’ of Wordsworth, murmuring elm trees of Clare, and autumnal undergrowth of Keats, what less familiar riches might this literary landscape reveal?  ‘Rootsing’ to ‘Soilache’, our mossary of linguistic invention also casts language in a browner earthy light.  More details on Jade’s website www.jadecuttle.co.uk or social media @JadeCuttle.