Mock Orange

Mock Orange is a collection of poems in which Anne Osbourn attempts to order her life and her origins and to try to understand how and why she became a scientist, specifically a plant biologist. From early childhood she has tried to make sense of the world through plants. In mid-eighteenth century Sweden Linnaeus, the father of modern taxonomy, spent his life trying to understand his Maker through the classification of plants. Osbourn's poetry encompasses Linnaeus's adventures and experiences and his fascination with living things. Mock Orange is therefore about journeys from origins, both personal and global, in which negotiations between scientific and non-scientific languages and points of view form a central theme.