International Poetry Book Award for Local Writer

Published on: 28 Oct, 2025
Updated on: 28 Oct, 2025

Liz and Vilma’s book, Meet Us and Eat Us

By Alice Fowler

Surrey writer Liz Kendall and her London-based co-author Vilma Bharatan have been awarded third prize in The International Poetry Book Awards 2025.

Their book, Meet Us and Eat Us: Food plants from around the world, impressed the judges with its inviting combination of poetry, prose, and fine art photography.

Awards judge John Evans said: “What is perhaps most remarkable is how consistently the authors manage to balance instruction and imagination.

The writing never feels mechanical; the poems retain warmth, humour and personality. The marriage of text and image creates a rhythm of its own—at times lyrical, at times playful—reminding us that poetry can speak through many forms.”

The book connects the arts and sciences, exploring the botanical relationships and cultural uses of the plants we eat. Its portrayal of 90 edible plant species covers a broad sweep of history, from prehistory through the Age of Exploration to modern processing methods and the challenges of climate change.

Mythology inspires poems about the hazelnut, walnut and apple, for example, while breadfruit and peanut are shown in the context of their links to slavery.

Liz is part of Guildford’s thriving writing community, performing regularly at the Pizza & Poetry open mic at Solar Sisters on North Street, hosted by poet Sharron Green, and at Guilfest.

While most poetry books are slim in size, hers and Vilma’s is the opposite: a 256-page hardback, with Liz’s poems complemented by Vilma’s colourful and exuberant arthouse photographs. The book’s cover, for example, depicts a magnificent heritage tomato, lounging on an arm chair.

Poet Liz Kendall and co-author Vilma Bharatan

Liz, who lives in Cobham, says: “I come from a family that loves to cook and to eat, and to spend time in nature. I’ve grown up in the Surrey countryside, with Irish and Indian heritage.

“Vilma was born in Tanzania, East Africa before her parents returned to India where they grew a lot of food. She moved to London in the 1980s, is a PhD scientist and the official botanist of the project, while I’m more of a hedgerow forager.

“I love marking the seasons with wild garlic, blackberries, and sweet chestnuts. Food never gets boring; familiar flavours are comforting, but there’s always something new to try.”

The book – which took some 15 years to produce – aims to introduce readers to edible plants they may not have come across before, while appealing to all age groups. ‘That’s why we combined poetry, prose and fine art photography, to bring the arts and sciences back together in storytelling,’

Liz explains. “We wanted to make food personal, so people could get to know a variety of plants in the context of their botanical families, history, and many uses. The book was Vilma’s idea, and she invited me to help with the writing. She’s known me all my life as we’re related through our fathers, and she remembered me writing poetry years ago.

“While we both love cooking, our main motivation was a growing concern over restrictive diets and misinformation about food. We noticed that people were losing confidence in cooking and in their own instincts about food, and that this had worldwide consequences.”

Scientist Vilma, as well as a researcher and classically trained artist, adds: ‘The variety of food plants eaten are getting less varied with the rise of monoculture farming which has a knock-on effect on the rest of life, from pollinators to poor soil health, to name a few. A lot of children can’t recognise whole vegetables as they only see them ready-prepared, and aren’t involved in cooking.’

The book took four years to produce, from draft writing to printing, while the artwork and research began fifteen years ago.

“Vilma was using her photographs to illustrate her food plant talks at the Natural History Museum,” Liz says.

“She started getting creative at home, adding anthropomorphic details and cultural designs. The Covid-19 lockdowns spurred us into committing to the book. Once we’d got the writing underway, we kept the momentum going when we were back to our self-employed work: Vilma as a homeopath and me as a Shiatsu and massage therapist and Tai Chi Qigong teacher.”

Having known each other all their lives, the pair worked together well. “It was a real collaboration, and a harmonious one,” Liz adds. “The main focus was to choose the most interesting and useful information to share. We wanted each artwork, poem and prose to stand alone, but also complement its partners.”

After deciding to self-publish, she and Vilma ran a Kickstarter campaign to raise funding and awareness, working with professional designers and choosing the award-winning Gomer Press as the printer.

“Self-publishing was a steep learning curve but well worth it,” Liz says. ‘Meet Us and Eat Us is exactly how we wanted it to be, from the contents to the scuff-proof cover.’

The book has been taken up by the charity School Food Matters, who use it in their education sessions, and is on the shelves at the National Poetry Library, the Barbican Library, and the research libraries at the Natural History Museum and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

Copies are for sale at Paper Moon, the new independent bookshop in Jeffries Passage, Guildford, as well as at Lionsheart Bookshop in Woking and The Cobham Bookshop.

To find out more and sign up to the authors’ free monthly newsletter, see meetusandeatus.co.uk