“In the magical world of Lydia Harris’s poems, books are transformed into

windows, hearts, birds, ghosts - even stars. History, landscape and love

are woven together in poems which are celebratory, uplifting, reverential

and sublime. Lydia Harris is a poet who brings new meaning to the word

unique.” —John Glenday

“What better moment than this, on the brink of a digital, screen-facing age,

to recover the almost supernatural power of early books – how physical

materials, calf skin, pigment, quill pen, ink, could be alive with other times

and presences, and all our human feelings, maybe even God? These poems

perform that paradox – to be small, alertly at home in particular place,

while opening on a wealth of worlds beyond. In them, boundaries dissolve

– between the local and the universal, fact and fable, the colloquial and the

biblical, the human and non-human, between the 16th century and today.

Through the opening Henrietta steps, both grave and playful, with a bright

rapt curiosity that feels like praise.” —Philip Gross

“What a delight it is to enter Henrietta’s world. Collating an imagined

repository of knowledge from, and for, ‘the whole wide world’, she draws

manuscripts, stones, seals, herons, boats, the earth and sea into her

linguistic inventory. Like a word-farmer, she shepherds, cares for, and

cultivates texts. Through Henrietta, Harris explores language and books as

containers, explainers, archives, descriptors, and exchange. Her lightness of

touch creates joyously airy music, fresh as a ‘newly caulked boat’. Precise,

compassionate, and buoyant, Henrietta’s Library of the Whole Wide World

reminds us of the hope inherent in the creation and collection of books, and

our fundamental quest for shared experience and understanding.”

—Heidi Williamson