Zaro Weil

About Zaro Weil

Zaro Weil was born in the US, before moving to London, where she spent most of her life. She worked as a director, dancer, actress, playwright, historian, author, publisher and poet, among other things.

Now she lives in an old farm on a little hill in southern France with her husband, two sheepdogs and a host of birds, insects, badgers, wild boars, crickets, donkeys, goats and hares, who provide her with inspiration for her work.

Full of hope and wonder, Zaro’s poems celebrate nature in all its shapes and sizes. They whisk you away from the busy-busy of everyday life and welcome you with stretching earthworms, sodden puffs and fast flying fish, as in her poem “This wet spring moon”. They encourage you to think about how the rocks under your feet came to exist (“Don’t be bored rock”) and ask you to reflect on the quiet within you (“Hide and Seek”).

Zaro’s poems are often crammed with imagery, alliteration, assonance, consonance and surprise. She has a fabulous way of playing with language, making words leap and bounce off each other – encouraging us to celebrate the joy of language as well as the natural world.

In “Think of it”, Zaro packs each line with words that work hard to earn their place in the poem. With phrases like ”a sudden trumpet of green”, “a sky of confetti blossoms” and “the force of a billion winter winds”, she helps us share her wonder for the quiet brilliance of nature, reminding us that spring has happened for many years before us, and will continue long after we are gone.

In “A Parade of Beast-Doodles”, nature becomes a gift to be unwrapped,”a sky full of clouds / all puff-pomps and shine-streaks / bubble-whites and lace-feathers”. Zaro uses language in an entirely original way, and in doing so, forces us to look at nature with fresh eyes – and leaves us wondering what we might unwrap next.