The Leaping Hare and the Moon Daisy

The poem that kickstarted her collection began with an encounter with a hare in the middle of the road. The poet stopped her car to let the hare run off, but it just stood still and looked at her. For Jill, this was a magical moment, and one that prompted her to learn something more about her curious friend, researching the creature, its habitat, and the folklore that surrounds it. Then a chain of thoughts, observations and reading led her to consider the bigger picture.

Having been inspired by another poet's debut collection, Jill began to think in terms of bringing out her own poetry book, with the intention of incorporating gifts to UK wildlife charities. Further inspiration came from other books, Alan Marshall's The Artful Hare, and The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris. The latter highlighted a particular concern, as it set out to re-introduce vocabulary of the natural world dropped from the 2007 edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary, including acorn, bluebell, conker, fern, willow and kingfisher. The poet agreed with the point made that people will only care about elements of the natural world if they know something about them. Anything adding to that information is useful.

A chance meeting with a hare, a lifelong appreciation of the countryside and the sheer joy of creating poems combined to give Jill Stanton-Huxton the wherewithal to fulfil the dream of so many poets – to hold her own volume in her hands. At the same time, she has the knowledge that her writing will bring pleasure to others, help to re-introduce those worryingly excluded words for the younger generation, and bring ever-needed funds to wildlife charities.