Book Review - Wintering by Katherine May

I have to admit I went into Katherine May's new book Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times with specific expectations which is unusual for me with non-fiction books. Expectations about what wintering meant and what I was looking for from the book. I can't remember where I came across the recommendation for the book, but idea that caught my eye amounted to learning to cope with the winters of our life and a connection to Finland. 

I may have mentioned on this blog that I live in Finland and maybe hinted at that I'm not actually very happy about that anymore. While I'm making in-roads at finding a way to get out, I came to the book with the hope that I could find ways to make my stay in this very wintery place, both metaphorically and physically, bearable until I do. 

May says that 'wintering' is those times when we need to retreat from the world. It can be for a variety of reasons, illness, stress, ect. It's listening to your body's urge to hibernate, eat heavy meals, wrap up in wool and slow down. 

The book contains many of my favourite wintery things which is saying a lot because to be honest I am not a fan of the season of winter at all. But I do love the darkness and magic of Samhain, the Cailleach, standing stones, hibernation during the cold dark months, wolves. She also looks at a few I don't like as much like saunas and winter swimming. Both these latter things are very much part of the Finnish psyche, though Finland really doesn't feature much in the book outside of this. May turns to these various things to try and work through her wintering periods. 

Oddly, it felt like she was full of energy to go off and try all these various techniques, on her own and with other people, something I think many people who need to 'winter' would struggle with, to be social, try new adventures. I realise that the events and adventures she wrote about were maybe separated by years at different periods of wintering, but I would have liked more examination of how to face the dark stillness of winter when there aren't friends around or even strangers to go stand at Stonehenge on midsummer. This would have made the book even more helpful in the last year when we couldn't go out much when we have been forced to winter and many of us found it incredibly difficult.

She considers bees and wolves and other totems to give a sense of searching for an answer to how nature copes in winter. It still felt distant from what I was seeking. I guess as wintering is such a personal need it's hard to formulate solutions that will suit everyone. 

I liked that the book did not look at self-care in the way the media portrays it of long baths and scented candles, it is about pushing oneself to face the cold dark months, to step into the liminal spaces that take us out of the rush of the everyday world. May was open to more unusual avenues. Saunas were crossed off the when she suffered from heat exhaustion, obviously doing it wrong. 

Cold water swimming turned out to be more of her thing. I have a friend who loves doing this and some day I will be brave or crazy enough to join her. But I'm a person who passed out from the cold after swimming in the sea in Greece, in June, so maybe not the best idea without a sauna nearby to revive me.

In the end, though I went in looking for answers and left without a satisfying one, I did have a sense that there were the possibility of answers in her words, her explorations, just not for me and my questions. I enjoyed reading about some of my obsessions from someone else's point of view and her attempts to use them to examine this difficult issue. Her writing is soothing, honest and, at times fun, and I was not disappointed with the book. 

In my wintering periods, I turn to writing, among other traditional things like gardening, baking and crochet. Not poems or stories, but journaling, note taking, writing around the darkness that's crowding in on me. I become an explorer through words, unable to get out into the light, I dig deeper into my mind. 

Here's a writing prompt, what is winter to you? This can mean the actual season where you live or where you grew up or winter in May's sense, the fallow seasons of our lives. What rituals or memories do you connect with the idea of winter? Do you enjoy being in the heart of winter or do you long to move past it as quickly as possible?

Book Review - White Eye of the Needle - Chris Campbell - Blog Tour

Poetry has been a balm for many over the past difficult year, for others it has been an outlet to express the whirlwind of emotions. Chris Campbell’s White Eye of the Needle, currently available from The Choir Press, is the first published collection I’ve read that mentions the current epidemic, though its presence has been felt through poems in journals and online since this all began.

Covid’s stamp on the current poetry scene can’t be ignored as I’m sure it will continue to weigh down many poetic collections in the near future, but former journalist Campbell doesn’t dwell on the epidemic. The poetry collection themes range from travel to relationships. They are well-matched by Sandra Evans' sweet, detailed line drawings, gems in themselves.

Campbell’s writing is delightful, focusing on those simple moments that in retrospect carry so much importance now, especially as many ordinary habits of our life, visiting a café, going to an open air market have been denied us in the last year. His poems remind us to savour the things we once enjoyed freely.

Campbell’s mentions of Corona life start subtle and are rarely the main focus of the poems, but they increase and unfortunately ring too familiar. Some are humorous like ‘Mr Cat’ which plays with the joys and struggle of sharing living spaces and Zoom calls with cats. Others shine a light on the fears of our new reality during the epidemic.

Anxious. Flashing an impatient look, his eyes

Brighten in the dark. He lets us pass in silence.

 

I gesture a thank you–his mouth looks like it opens,

But it hides behind a mask.

                                                ‘Chimney Snorkels’

This scene suggests for me The Scream by Edvard Munch, an unspoken, bright filter of confusion and fear thrown over an everyday encounter.

Thankfully not all the poems have this cloud hanging over them. There are joyful moments of just living with people around us, enjoying the closeness of busy city life, of holidays, of distant family memories. They capture those minute details of travel, moving freely about our towns and cities, experiences we all hope to return to soon. The poems and illustrations work together to lift the reader with Campbell’s lightness in phrase and imagery echoed in Evan's drawings.

The last poems end on wistful notes, an empty restaurant around a newly married couple, a wish for time to slow down, memories of loved ones. In these poems, Campbell echoes the sentiments that many of us feel of being grateful for what we have, what we have experienced and what we can look forward to. But we can't help but look back at what we've lost and yearn for a second chance at those moments.

My review is part of a blog tour for Chris' collection. Check out other blogger's views via their Twitter handles below or follow @kenyon_isabelle for more book blog tours.