In 2022, my husband and I taught 30 university honors students in Lincolnshire, England from early January until the end of April. We all lived and taught courses at Harlaxton Manor, adjacent to Harlaxton Village, and from the manor, we could see the rapeseed fields glowing in the distance under cloudy, grey skies. We often took long walks to small towns and villages and spent our free time on trains and busses traveling to small cities, places we’d never seen on previous London-centered trips. We were not natives, but our lives developed a regular rhythm, and we experienced daily life in the countryside. All the elements of “Season of Rapeseed Fields” are rooted in those four months, including, sadly, the decline of my mother-in-law, who passed away one week before our scheduled return.

Annette Sisson lives in Nashville, TN and teaches at Belmont University. Her poems appear in The Penn Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Cloudbank, Rust + Moth, Citron Review, Cumberland River Review, Sky Island Journal, West Trade Review, and many other journals and anthologies. Her second book, Winter Sharp with Apples, was published by Terrapin Books 2024. Her first book, Small Fish in High Branches, was published by Glass Lyre Press 2022. In 2024, one of her poems was a finalist for the Charles Simic Poetry Prize and two were nominated for The Pushcart Prize.

W: annettesisson.com
I: @annettesis
F: facebook.com/annette.m.sisson/