November 26th, 2023Under The Mop Top Tree
Vanessa I. R. Craven is a poet, author, artist and singer-songwriter who lives in Daylesford having made a treechange from Melbourne where she worked as a health sciences librarian. She has built an eco-friendly house and enjoys living in this beautiful area.
Vanessa hales from Mussoorie, a hill-station in Northern India in the Himalaya Mountains, where she was born and lived for 25 years.
Music, art/painting, photography and writing are her loves. Her father was Welsh and her mother North Indian, and both were teachers. She owes much to them for fostering a love of literature, art, music, photography and writing.
As a writer a recent highlight is her first self-published book, Birds in My Tree: The Magic of Birds and the Joy of Singing. As a poet, Under the Mop Top Tree is her second self-published book. Some of the poetry has been turned into songs and some remain as poems.
The title of this book comes from the Mop Top Tree in the front garden. Its shady boughs in summer and the bare branches in winter provide ideal conditions for the inspiration of poetry and song-writing.
The poems in this book are divided into the sections of facts, fantasy and foibles.
Poet Ross Gillett says in his foreword: “There is a whole life being lived in the pages of this book. Relationships – between family member and friends, and between lovers – are at its core, as too is the natural world of sky and trees and birds and the realms of experience which memory and loss open up for all of us.
“Grief at the passing of parents, as well as profound attachment to a loved pet, are registered alongside a joyous and often humorous sense of day-to-day living.
“A deeply felt concern for the victims of war and injustice is another thread woven through the poetry in Under the Mop Top Tree, the entirety of which is characterised by an open-hearted embrace of what it means to be alive in this complex and multi-horizoned age. Vanessa Craven has produced a collection of poems that will relate to the lives of a wide range of readers.”
Under the Mop Top Tree is available from Paradise Books and the Daylesford Trading Co in Daylesford or from Vanessa at www.acousticsessions.com.au/book-shop/
