Clare Hall PhD student Jade Cuttle has recently turned her English literature research into a BBC Radio 3 Essay titled ‘Digging for Words.’ Jade presented her writing live on BBC Radio 3, which is also available to listen to online at BBC Sounds. The essay was made as part of her tenure as a BBC New Generation Thinker 2024-2025. 

Jade’s essay is inspired by her PhD research, under the supervision of Robert Macfarlane, which examines nature poets of colour writing in Britain from 2012-2025, and celebrates the upcoming publication of Britain’s first-ever anthology in this field, Nature Matters: Vital Poems from the Global Majority.

‘Digging for Words’ translates fieldwork techniques that I have learned through my passion for metal detecting into the field of literature, in order to unearth evidence of an overlooked poetic tradition. If we dig beneath the ‘golden daffodils’ of Wordsworth, murmuring elm trees of Clare, & autumnal undergrowth of Keats, what less familiar riches might this literary landscape reveal? ‘Rootsing’ to ‘Soilache’, our mossary of linguistic invention also casts language in a browner earthy light.

-Jade Cuttle

Follow Jade’s fascinating work on her website www.jadecuttle.co.uk or social media @JadeCuttle.