All My Wild Mothers author to host Stromness reading

Preview by Aidan Semmens

How can converting a rubble-strewn former industrial site into a herb garden – even the planting of a single seed – help to heal grief and turn around a life indelibly marked by loss?

This question is at the heart of Orkney-based author Victoria Bennett’s highly acclaimed memoir All My Wild Mothers.

And Orkney Arts Society has invited her to give a reading in Stromness to mark its appearance in paperback.

In 2006 Victoria took part in BBC reality series The Convent, she was one of four women who volunteered to live for six weeks among the nuns in a closed order in Sussex.

Described at the start as “a free-thinking poet” and “a bohemian atheist,” the voice-over intro to each episode claimed: “This journey could ultimately change their lives forever.”

However, what really changed Victoria’s life occurred the following year.

Victoria was seven months pregnant with her, much longed-for, child when she learned that her eldest sister had died in a canoeing accident.

It is the horror of that moment, the combination of grief and love that followed, and the new life she made for herself and her son that are explored in All My Wild Mothers.

The book, billed as being about “motherhood, loss and an apothecary garden,” weaves together memoir and herbal folklore in a tale of how hope can triumph over difficult times.

It has been described as “a beautiful bruise of a book”, and by bestselling Orkney writer Amy Liptrot as “a fascinating, tangled read on gardening as resistance and using the ancient ways to heal in a modern world”.

Sunday Times Writer of the Year Cal Flyn called Victoria Bennett “an exciting new voice in nature writing,” and her book “impossibly moving.”

Victoria herself says she “fell in love with Orkney” in 2007, before her son was born, though it was another 15 years before the family finally moved from Cumbria to St Margaret’s Hope.

In the meantime came “motherhood and grief and all the other things that happened in life.” At the same time she made several visits to Orkney with her husband and son, including an extended stay in 2018 as part of an arts residency.

“Over those years, we formed friendships and connections with people up here,” she says. “So the pull to Orkney has been a long one.

“In 2022 we decided that we wanted to make it happen before our son grew up and left home, and somehow the practical things fell into place.

“It was a hard move, especially as Cumbria had been our home for nearly three decades and my family are still there, but we knew it was one we wanted to make.

“As I am sharing care for my elderly father, it can sometimes be hard being a long-distance caregiver, especially with the cost of travel and in the winter months when transport can be disrupted. But we really love it here and we feel welcomed.

“It is fascinating to learn a whole new wild apothecary too, and to begin a garden again from scratch.

“It is such an inspiring place to live as well, and has such a vibrant and supportive arts community. Our son is interested in archaeology and music, so there isn’t really anywhere better!”

Victoria Bennett will be reading from and discussing All My Wild Mothers at Stromness Town Hall at 7.30pm on Wednesday, March 13.