📖 Book review ~ Ten Poems about Vegetables from Candlestick Press

Candlestick press
May 2025

My thanks to the publisher for my copy of this pamphlet 

We’ve all heard the phrase “eat your greens”, but vegetables come in countless other colours that are every bit as nutritious and delicious as the green ones.

This selection captures the many glories of the vegetable kingdom, finding delight in planting, tending and digging them up, as well as in cooking and eating them. Anyone who has an allotment or vegetable patch (or just a tub by the back door) will know there’s nothing quite like a home-grown potato or tomato.

From skinny beans to curvaceous aubergines, the poems explore the almost-human shapes and textures of vegetables, which appeal to the senses in so many different ways:

“It’s the perfect vegetable,
palette-green, bottle-glass-glossy,
three dimensional, curvy
on top, firm-limbed but friable.”

from ‘Broccoli’ by Siriol Troup

This irresistible anthology creates a vividly earthy world, full of charm and wit.

Poems by Alison Brackenbury, Miriam Darlington, Jen Hadfueld, Ted Kooser, Michael Laskey, Thomas Lux, Natasha Rao, Sumana Roy, Siriol Troup and Steve Waling.

Cover illustration by SaracBoccaccini Meadows

📖 My Review..

My father was an enthusiastic grower of vegetables and I have fond memories of him in the garden, in all weathers, tending his ramrod rows of onions and carrots, pulling the first crop of tender new potatoes or bringing into the kitchen crisp lettuce and succulent tomatoes. The simple joy of podding home grown peas or searching for the green strands of runner beans will remain with me forever. This latest anthology from Candlestick Press takes us into the vegetable plot of imagination where we relish the sights and tastes of ten different vegetables.

Currently waiting in my vegetable box is a glossy aubergine:

“ Aubergine, aubergine - slippery sheen

nightshade black; satin. Pick it up

put it back. Skin tacky like PVC-

lit up like a stripper - or the tight black trousers

on the snaking hips of a Greek waiter - seducer

of extra virgin olive oil”

From Organic by Miriam Darlington 

I like the idea of coming back as a tomato which is described so beautifully:

“I want to return 

from reincarnation’s spin covered in dirt and buds. I want to be unabashed, audacious, to gobble space, to blush deeper each day on the sun…”

From In my next life let me be a tomato by Natasha Rao

We tend to take vegetables for granted, just one of our five a day but we never really stop to consider the beauty of them and this fine anthology of Ten Poems about Vegetables reminds us of their beauty, versatility and the pleasure they give us be that in the garden or on our plates. It’s a perfect gift instead of a card for the enthusiastic vegetable grower or for who anyone appreciates the beauty of nature’s bounty.

About the Publisher 

Candlestick Press is a small, independent press publishing sumptuously produced poetry pamphlets that serve as a wonderful alternative to a greetings card, with matching envelopes and bookmarks left blank for your message. Their subjects include Mountains, Clouds, Walking, Birds, Wine and Happiness. Candlestick Press pamphlets are stocked by chain and independent bookshops, galleries and garden centres nationwide and available to order online.

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