A Woking writer hopes to take readers on a journey around their natural surroundings. 

Liz Lennie has published a book of haiku titled Images: Water Gardens. She also did the cover photos herself. 

A haiku is a short, unrhymed poem consisting of 17 syllables arranged in three lines of five, seven, and five syllables.  

Liz said: “I grew up on Blackwell Farm on the Hog’s Back between Guildford and Farnham.

“There, I discovered the world through nature and agriculture and escaping into books. 

“I’d sometimes disappear into my bedroom, fields, woods or a barn of hay and straw and just write.” 

Liz got deeper into poetry through the A-Level anthology Rhyme and Reason and works by D.H. Lawrence and W.B. Yeats. 

It was while on Voluntary Service Overseas in Singapore, that she came across an old book called The Narrow Road to the Deep North by the famous Japanese Edo period poet Matsuo Bashō. 

“It just grabbed me,” Liz added.

“There was this man hundreds of years back, wandering around and writing haiku.” 

While teaching in Singapore for two years, Liz published a book of pupils’ poems and helped start and edit Saya. Which means ‘I’ in Malay, and it lasted 10 years, long after she left.

She wrote Images: Water Gardens as a book of individual haiku linked to form one poem. About a local water garden with a deeper meaning about the power of nature and acceptance of change.  

On a local level, Liz is a member of Woking Writers Circle, a group of all ages who meet on the third Thursday of each month to share their work. Meetings take place at St Mary’s Church in Horsell at 7.30pm. 

You can purchase Liz’s book at Woking’s Lionheart Bookshop. Ten per cent and extra donations go towards the Alzheimer's Society.