3.5 stars Poetry and Prose about Winter. Some of it was excellent but a bit too much prose and some of it did not seem all that Winter themed. Nevertheless I am glad I read it. I will start on the Spring one in the 20th March. ( )

A really lovely collection of poetry and prose celebrating Winter. ( )

The turn of the seasons is steady and relentless. Winter is a time to batten down the hatches, and retreat inside from the weather and darkness. It is also a reboot for the natural world, the cold forces animals and plants to pause, reset and hold with the anticipation of longer days coming soon. But there is life out there if you know where to look, the promise of fresh green to come contained within sticky buds, birds eking out an existence as they flit from branch to branch in search of food. It is a time when you can be faced with biting cold, sparkling light and cloudy breath one day, followed by gale force winds soon after. The sun sits low in the sky, barely warming the earth; the horizontal rays make the stark skeletons of trees stand out against the skyline.

Melissa Harrison in this quite lovely collection of essays, poetry and extracts has drawn together some of our finest writers collective thoughts about this darkest of seasons. There are well known, comforting passages from some of my favourite writers like Kathleen Jamie and Robert Macfarlane, new words from Patrick Barkham and a raft of other authors that I now need to go and find out more about. It is a perfect little book for the season, something to read whilst sat in a comfortable armchair up with a glass or two of mulled wine to hand. 4.5 stars ( )

I feel fortunate to have read the full series of seasonal anthologies edited by Melissa Harrison. I felt the hope and rebirth of Spring, basked in the lazy heat of Summer, revelled in the glorious colours of Autumn and now it is the cold and harshness of Winter.

Perhaps as it is my least favourite season, I didn't feel winter through the writing as much as I did with the other anthologies. Winter does, however, have the most apt opening line that epitomises winter as written by Roger Deakin in Notes from Walnut Tree Farm:

"A sharp, sugaring frost. The mulberry is at its best in November when at last it undresses itself."

So very apt, for does not the ground look sprinkled with icing sugar on a cold frosty morning? And do the trees not shed their leaves like the last remnants of clothing as they put themselves to bed for the cold harsh winter to come?

Published in conjunction with The Wildlife Trusts, Winter completes the year of seasons and, although it is my least favourite of the anthologies, as a whole it is a stunning collection.

I chose to read an ARC and this is my honest and unbiased opinion. ( )

‘’Quickly, days short, somehow we all adjust and welcome the dark, for it is neither threatening nor smothering. Darkness becomes a thing of joy and vivid beauty in its own right. When early winter storms blow in, night skies are shrouded in heavy swathes of purple-black velvet. On cloudless nights the Milky Way comes overhead, a broad braided river of light coursing through the sky. And in this time of conflict and rapid change, of life and death, other lights become visible as the darkness deepens, flickering and shimmering in neon greens and reds, the Northern Lights should be ringing with trumpets and other heavenly music as they herald the arrival of winter, but they are utterly silent.’’

In Athens, winter comes suddenly and unexpectedly. Every year I wait for it, tired by the scorching heat of the summer, finally irritated by our whimsical autumn that seems unable to decide between heat and cold. Every year, there comes a day when I wake up and realise that it is finally time for the entire winter survival kit. Coat, scarf, boots, gloves, a woolen hat. I have the happy opportunity to work in the northern part of our capital, in a beautiful neighborhood where the seasons make their presence known in a much more accurate way than in the heart of the city and wintry days can be rather trying. And yet, I wouldn’t change winter for a thousand summers.

‘’Winter is about endurance and that’s all you can do. Endure. Fingers numbed from the frostbitten breeze, cheeks red and raw and burning from the cold; you blink to stop your eyes from watering.’’

I remember a textbook from primary school that called winter ‘’the death of nature’’. Bloody nonsense! Winter isn’t a time of death, winter is a time of togetherness and warmth. My grandma used to love winter, despite the endless years of surviving the cold days and nights during the Second World War, despite the lack of comforts that we have the honour to enjoy nowadays. She loved winter because it was the time for the family to gather and tell stories, reminisce and dream of the future waiting at the edge of winter. A time for true ‘’coziness’’, not pretentious blubbering for glamorous magazines but a moment when whispering by the light of the lamp created memories. This is the feeling I experienced while I was reading Winter, the third book in the Seasons series edited by Melissa Harrison.

‘’On these shores, winter feels more ambiguous: at times a long, grey sigh or a drawn-out ache, with occasional sharp pains to remind you of its bite. The night skies are perfect for star-gazing, though. And if you’re lucky, your loved ones clasp you a little closer. Then there are the short-lived days when the wind briefly throws into a sweet-scented, benign breeze and you feel a frisson of anticipation.’’

Let us travel to the Scottish Highlands, to the metropolis of London. To Dartmoor and Wistman’s Wood. To Norfolk and Bench Tor. To Northumberland, to Oxford. Let us experience winter in the city, let us enjoy the coziness of winter in a traditional village. Let us feel the screaming air from the winter sea. Let us welcome the Winter Solstice, Christmas and Candlemas under the bright, mystical light of the winter moon. There is always something enticing about the way moonbeams are lighting the branches of the trees that have shed all their leaves. Let us be careful of the east wind that blows, bringing nightmare according to the old superstition. Let us wonder on the attitude of ancient cultures towards winter with a mulberry wine at hand by the Christmas tree. Foxes, badgers, pheasants, woodpeckers, plovers, kingfishers, otters and ravens will keep us company.

Roger Deakin has written a beautiful text on leaves and their unique presence in our world. Caroline Greville beautifully describes the haunting nights when winter begins to show us that it has finally come. There is also an atmospheric extract from Dickens’s Bleak House on London and fog in the late November nights. Ronald Blythe’s moving text on Christmas, Saint Thomas and the Resurrection of Lazarus. A beautiful passage from Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and from Dubliners by James Joyce. Emma Kemp shares a poetic description of a walk on a winter’s night and Brian Carter talks about the memories of a childhood’s snowy days in the North. Jon Dunn describes the winter darkness in the Shetland Islands and the festivities of Up Helly Aa in a beautiful, dark text and what collection would be complete without a chapter by Thomas Hardy?

Winter is harsh and beautiful, pure and threatening, cold, possibly unapproachable but majestic. This anthology captures the spirit of the quiet season to perfection. And as for me, winter is the cold morning when a child used to wake up at 7 o’clock to see whether it was snowing, when Grandma always reassured me that snow would come soon and I was sitting by the Christmas tree, staring out of the window, waiting, in a house full of the aroma of fresh coffee, cinnamon, almonds and the sound of crackling wood in the fireplace. Winter is the whitened sky and the grey noons, the cobalt blue of the blue hour, the lights that start flickering from 4 o’clock in the afternoon, the oversized scarf knitted by Grandma because ‘’it is too cold outside and your skin is too sensitive, puppet.’’ Winter is stories. Winter is memories.

‘’There are moments of peace even in the darkest of times. When life is stripped to its purest core we find its resolve is strong. And when the world around me is so cold it nearly takes my breath away, when my feet feel they might just be snatched from beneath me, I will push on- on to the grass, towards the other side and to my destination: to sit and rest there a while, until time and nature have thawed my heart and fears.’’

My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com ( )