Julie Leoni responds to the impact of changing agricultural systems on the land

Flowers for Ophelia
Three poems by Michelle Szobody in the voice of Ophelia, exploring how her relationships with both nature and patriarchy affect her sense of self. Each jumps off from one of the many botanical references in Hamlet.
Michelle’s collaborator Philippe Nash used technology available in Shakespeare’s time to respond to the poems with etchings, incorporating specimens of plants collected in Sussex and Gloucestershire. Michelle and Philippe are interested in how Ophelia subverts the cliché of the blossom as a symbol of femininity.
Snowdrop
OPHELIA: [Singing.]
White his shroud as the mountain snow,
Larded all with sweet flowers.
* * * * *
Trembling little votives,
lit up from within,
shards of shell,
paper-thin porcelain,
they hide their own thoughts
in their bonnets
and nod
at each suggestion of the winds.
If I could be a weed,
God let me be a snowdrop,
bulbed heart rooted in the dark,
cloning out in drifts:
Imagine
an entire speechless cloister
of wimpled sisters
all called Ophelia.

Primrose
OPHELIA:
I shall the effect of this good lesson keep
As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother,
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,
Whiles, like a puff’d and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own rede.
* * * * *
My father says to:
Tender yourself more dearly;
you do not understand yourself so clearly;
think yourself a baby.
Lord Hamlet is a prince, out of thy star;
this must not be.
Once, in the northern shadows of the wood,
I marked how an April snow
had prismed a prison around the primrose,
clutched her close in ice
even after the sun had spilled
through the shafts of blackthorn.
I can still recall
her jaundiced flounces.
The cherry plum
had spent its dress already;
the buttons of lesser celandine
disclosed their buttery centres.
I will make myself somewhat scanter,
will no longer slander
Hamlet’s leisure
with my presence,
promise to walk
with smaller tether
the paths
where
anaemic
spring
is fading
fast.
Grass / Straw
OPHELIA: [Singing.]
He is dead and gone, lady,
He is dead and gone;
At his head a grass-green turf,
At his heels a stone.
HAMLET:
Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats
Will not debate the question of this straw.
* * * * *
You smell of chamomile and sheep dung.
You’ve been straggling pastures,
fragile as an eggshell, running
over fields like a broken yolk
ever since your father’s funeral.
Ophelia, this is your Conscience speaking.
I’m here to help you
remember
that the scythe sings through the grasses
every year.
The stacking of straw
and the strewing of fodder
are rituals as predictable
as an old man’s death
or the leaving of a lover.
Stop shutting me out, Ophelia,
you raver. I am your Inner Critic,
and this is my right.
Open your eyes.
Consider
this poppy in the blades
of turf, cracked open
from her bud like a splash of blood.
Three blithe days of scarlet bloom
and then she knows
how to hold her breath beneath the dirt all winter
for the steely edge of spring
and the plough’s cold, bright vane.

Michelle Szobody is a British-American poet, translator, and researcher based in Brighton. She has been published on both sides of the Atlantic, was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, and won an IPPY award. Her work explores how women in literature relate to themselves, others, and the natural world. (Photo: Katherine Heath).
Philippe Nash is a nomadic artist and musician whose work focuses on reciprocity with nature. His intuitive and often unrepeatable processes explore how grief and praise interweave. Whether through unpredictable mediums like etching, or in live performances, he seeks to include wilderness in his work. See @philippenashmusic
Poems copyright © Michelle Szobody 2025, Primrose and Snowdrop images copyright © Philippe Nash 2025.