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BBC News
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Cambridge study suggests 'poetic obsession' with lawnmowers
Academic research suggests British poets have been writing about mowing the lawn for nearly 375 study, published in Critical Quarterly, argues there is a "lawnmower poetry" tradition that dates back to the 17th 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 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 Gardner's study claims lawnmower poetry reached its highpoint in the last 50 1979, Philip Larkin described killing a hedgehog with a motorised in 2007, Andrew Motion, who was poet laureate at the time, based an elegy for his father on memories of him mowing the 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." Follow Cambridgeshire news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
Times
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Cutting lines: How lawnmowers found a place in English poetry
There's a certain sound that drifts through British suburbia each summer: the low growl of the lawnmower. For many, it stirs memories of reluctant Saturday chores. For the nation's poets, however, it is the call of something far stranger and richer: a muse. According to a new study, the mundane task of grass-cutting has seeded a distinct literary tradition. Its author, Francesca Gardner of the University of Cambridge, proposes we recognise a new 'micro-genre' of English verse: lawnmower poetry. She suggests that generations of poets have found in lawnmowers devices both comically banal and endlessly suggestive. 'They might seem like strange and humdrum subjects, but they have inspired meditations on the grandest of themes, from conflict and death to parenthood and heartbreak,' she said. Sir
