Leonie Charlton on wildfires
Leonie Charlton on her new book of poetry about wildfires
Leonie Charlton is a Scottish writer and poet, who lives on a sheep farm at the foot of the mountain Ben Cruachan in Argyll. Her memoir Marram won an award for Scottish Book of the Year, recounting a life-long love of journeys on horseback. On Christmas Eve 2024 Leonie's house and farm burnt to the ground, after an ember from a woodburner started to smoulder, unseen, in a wooden panel. All - save the humans and animals on the farm - were lost. Every single possession, gone. The only thing Leone and her family had left were the clothes they stood up in, as they watched their home of 30 years burn.
From this moment, Leonie started to work on a collection of poetry. Fire is ever present in the collection - forest fires, the burning of heather and peat, fire as both a destroyer and a new beginning. This edition of In The Studio follows Leonie as she completes her collection, which will be published early 2027. We follow Leonie as she travels by horse to the island of Rasay, off Skye, and all through Argyll, working on the poems - about destruction, regeneration and hope - that will make up a collection to be called Heart Weather.
