Cambridge study suggests 'poetic obsession' with lawnmowers

BBC News

17-05-2025

Academic research suggests British poets have been writing about mowing the lawn for nearly 375 years.The study, published in Critical Quarterly, argues there is a "lawnmower poetry" tradition that dates back to the 17th Century.Author Francesca Gardner, from Cambridge University, admitted it "might seem random" to write poetry about mowing."Lawnmowers draw people to poetry as much as poetry draws people to lawnmowers," she said.
The university said the study revealed Britain's "poetic obsession" with the lawnmower, which has been used to explore themes such as childhood, violence and addiction.An early example was in 1651 when Andrew Marvell, a satirist and politician, wrote a poem where a scythe accidentally killed a bird as a comment on the English Civil Wars.Ms Gardner's study claims lawnmower poetry reached its highpoint in the last 50 years.In 1979, Philip Larkin described killing a hedgehog with a motorised lawnmower.And in 2007, Andrew Motion, who was poet laureate at the time, based an elegy for his father on memories of him mowing the lawn.Mark Waldron's 2017 poem I Wish I Loved Lawnmowers explored the narrator's addiction to crack cocaine."British poets are very interested in the lawn as a nostalgic space, so lawnmowers are often associated with childhood memories, especially of fathers working," said Ms Gardner. "The lawn is a safe domestic, often suburban, space in which unexpected violence can occur, as when Larkin kills a hedgehog."
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