Reward for Winter
Highly Commended in the 2016 Forward Prizes
“Those who admire Di Slaney’s sophisticated and dexterous poems will be deeply grateful for this first full collection. Swinging to the rhythms of farm life, the book takes in a wide range of tones, from the humour of ‘How to knit a sheep’ to the transcendent lyricism of the collection’s title poem ... [it also] includes a highly original sequence about chickens and egg-laying. Beautifully crafted and very moving.”
– Jonathan Edwards
Publisher’s Description
'For the first time in her adult life, she allowed herself to sweat.’
In 2005, Di Slaney abandoned her urban existence to become the custodian of an ancient farmhouse in Nottinghamshire, populating it with – at the last count – 150 animals, most of them rescued. Reward for Winter tells that story on three levels: the earthy triumphs and tribulations of a novice smallholder; the history of Bilsthorpe from Viking settlement through Civil War to coal mining in the 1920s; and the quirky and affecting biography of one of the farm’s chickens.
The land, the generations who have tended it and Di’s animals are given voice, from the humorous ‘How to knit a sheep’ to the intimate, illuminating cycle focusing on a single chicken – learn, among other fascinating details, what dictates the colour of your breakfast egg. Reward for Winter also explores Bilsthorpe’s hidden histories: lost landmarks Ingar’s Holt and Labour-in-Vain; an Elizabethan witch trial; a concealed Cavalier king and seventeenth-century adultery. This book stands as both a fascinating work of non-fiction and an elegant and accomplished volume of poems, offering the reader an escape hatch to the country and a lungful of bracing air.
About the Author
Di Slaney is a poet, publisher and animal sanctuary founder who lives in Nottinghamshire. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Nottingham Trent University and owns Candlestick Press (famed for 'poetry pamphlets, instead of a card'). Her poems have been published in various magazines including Magma, The Rialto, The Interpreter’s House and Brittle Star, twice shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, and winner of the 2022 Plough Poetry Prize. Her debut pamphlet Dad’s Slideshow was published by Stonewood Press in 2015.
In 2005, Di and her husband moved into a Grade II Listed four-hundred-year-old farmhouse, populating it with livestock and eventually starting Manor Farm Charitable Trust. The house, the animals, and the surrounding village of Bilsthorpe became the subjects of her first full-length collection of poetry, Reward for Winter, published by Valley Press in 2016. A second collection, Herd Queen, followed in 2020.
Vital Statistics
Imprint: Valley Press
Edition: First (March 2016)
Paperback ISBN: 9781908853639
Catalogue number: VP0080
Page count: 100
Trim size: 198x129mm
