{"id":1642,"date":"2025-07-01T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-01T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1642"},"modified":"2025-07-01T10:04:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-01T09:04:08","slug":"from-activist-to-novelist-the-emotional-journey-behind-send-flowers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/from-activist-to-novelist-the-emotional-journey-behind-send-flowers\/","title":{"rendered":"From Activist to Novelist: The Emotional Journey Behind Send Flowers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When I was a toddler, I told my mum that I wanted to \u2018paint the flowers\u2019. I didn\u2019t mean I wanted to scrawl petals in childish brush strokes. I wanted to paint the actual flowers in our garden. I thought that they were so beautiful that some unseen artist must be sneaking into the garden at night and colouring them in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Needless to say, my fascination with nature started early on. I credit my mum, a prolific gardener, with nurturing it. Thanks to her influence, I\u2019ve chosen to spend much of my adult life working to protect the natural world and, when it comes to my writing, flowers continue to be a very fruitful muse. It makes sense, then, that my first novel is about a woman who is deeply in love with a flowering tree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As early readers of SEND FLOWERS might recall, Fifi, my protagonist, also wanted to paint the flowers as a child. Yet, unlike me, her emotional connection to the natural world is severed by grief. It isn\u2019t until a houseplant appears on her doorstep that she begins rekindling her relationship with nature, part of which comes from making peace with the sensitivity that allowed her to care so much about the earth in the first place. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fifi\u2019s sensitivity is at the heart of SEND FLOWERS, or what artist Lora Matis calls \u2018radical softness.\u2019 Back in my Tumblr era, I was fascinated by Matis\u2019s work, in particular a series of images that visualised the phrase, \u2018radical softness as a weapon.\u2019 In an interview, Matis said<\/a>, \u2018radical softness is the idea that unapologetically sharing your emotions is a political move and a way to combat the societal idea that feelings are a sign of weakness.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve always been a deeply emotional person \u2013 as anyone who attended my Norwich book launch can tell you (I cried a lot). For a long time, my big feelings weren\u2019t something I was proud of. I used to think that to be taken seriously, I needed to be stoic, unflappable, even unfeeling. I needed to mirror masculinity. I have observed women in male-dominated fields who do this and I do not begrudge them for it \u2013 sometimes it\u2019s the only way to get ahead. But I couldn\u2019t tone down my emotionality if I tried. And what I have come to realise is that my sensitivity, and Fifi\u2019s, has value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I learned this in a rather unusual way. In 2016, I was working for Greenpeace on the campaign to ban fracking, staging a series of interventions in Lancashire which was, at the time, the industry\u2019s battleground. During one such intervention, I found myself in a field with Emma and Sophie Thompson, filming The Frack Free Bake Off \u2013 a solar-powered spoof of Britain’s favourite TV show. The field in question had been leased to Cuadrilla, a gas company that was preparing to drill there, and was under injunction, making it illegal to enter. Meanwhile, ministers were lobbying to overrule the local council’s decision to reject Cuadrilla\u2019s planning application. Democracy was at stake \u2013 not to mention the environment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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As the art director, I was tasked with recreating the Bake Off set, from the kitsch tablecloths to the floral bunting. When it comes to civil disobedience, it was as soft as it gets. The Frack Free Bake Off was disarming by design, poking fun at the establishment and getting the public on side. Yes, we\u2019d broken the injunction, but we\u2019d done so to bake with Nanny McPhee. It was wholesome. So much so that, when the police showed up, they were amused. Yet what happened next was anything but.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just as the smell of freshly baked cakes drifted across the tranquil Lancashire countryside, a tractor appeared on the horizon. It was the farmer who owned the field. He\u2019d faced years of peaceful protests and that day, something about the whole gingham-infused affair made him snap. He raced towards us towing a slurry tank filled to the brim with toxic cow manure. Yet surely, however infuriating our presence, no one would actually spray a group of whisk-wielding strangers with poo?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But he did. He sprayed it everywhere. Some activists stood in front of the shit chute with their arms splayed, daring him to continue. And what did I do? I cried. Well, actually, I had a panic attack. There was something about his bright red face atop that tractor that terrified me. He was senseless with rage. And the smell! Early readers will recognise this from the novel, too. That farmer, and my reaction to him, had such an impact on me that it kicked-started my own exploration of what it means to be \u2018radically soft.\u2019 Both as a means to soothe myself (at the time, I was extremely embarrassed) and to figure out what I, as a highly sensitive person, can offer the climate movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
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Actors Emma Thompson and her sister Sophie take direct peaceful action against the government’s plans for fracking. On the proposed fracking site they take part in the Frack Free Bake Off, inspired by the TV series the Great British Bake Off, in a bid to promote renewable energy.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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As Matis says, softness is a weapon in a world that glorifies violence. This is especially apt when we consider violence as a patriarchal tool \u2013 one that is currently being wielded over the world to exert control. Violence is the antithesis of empathy. It requires you to dehumanise your victim in order to condone your behaviour \u2013 much in the way the farmer did when he chose to spray us with shit. In this time of relentless upheaval, it is an easy trap to fall into. Empathy takes work. It is exhausting. Compassion fatigue is real. Yet I now consider softness as part of an activist ecosystem that creates effective movements for change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whilst non-violent direct action is a core value in many activist spaces, radical softness is different in that it recognises the inherent value of emotionality. In a society where the \u2018alpha male\u2019 is reasserting himself, softness is both an act of defiance and a tool. For the more we acknowledge and make space for emotion in activist spaces, the more sustainable and ultimately more human our response to the challenges we face. And when our actions are rooted in humanity, we reach hearts as well as minds. That, I decided, is what I brought to the table. But my ability to do that is not by chance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the ten years since Matis did numbers on Tumblr, they have reflected on \u2018the privilege of emotional vulnerability,\u2019 deepening their understanding of what it means to be soft in an unjust world. \u2018As a white artist,\u2019 they say<\/a>, \u2018it is essential for me to recognize that non-white people don\u2019t get as much room to be emotionally vulnerable, and that ideas of \u201csoftness\u201d are used to further brutalize and oppress non-white people.\u2019 In SEND FLOWERS, I reflect that to be soft, you need to be safe. Fifi doesn\u2019t allow her own vulnerability until she is part of a community that accepts her. Even then, she is a white woman, making safety more accessible to her than most. Achieving safety and softness for all is part of a much wider effort to address the injustices that enable machismo \u2013 that is, the white capitalist patriarchy. It is at the intersection of race and gender politics, as all inequalities are. For any act to be truly radical, it must work towards untangling a system that makes something as fundamentally human as emotion an inequitable liability, instead of a strength.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Flowers have a long history as activist symbols, from the anti-Vietnam war movement to the Suffragettes. Flowers are soft and unruly, showing up the violence and rigidity of oppressive systems. Although I never fulfilled my childhood ambition of painting them, I write about flowers to contribute to this protest tradition, in the hope that one day, we might all be able to live as flowers do \u2013 soft, unruly, and free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Send Flowers by Emily Buchanan is available for purchase here<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2016, I was working for Greenpeace on the campaign to ban fracking, staging a series of interventions in Lancashire which was, at the time, the industry\u2019s battleground. During one such intervention, I found myself in a field with Emma and Sophie Thompson, filming The Frack Free Bake Off \u2013 a solar-powered spoof of Britain’s favourite TV show…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1654,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[210,213,216,212,217,218,219,223,211,214,222,170,221,220,209,215],"class_list":["post-1642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-activism","tag-climate-action","tag-climate-anxiety","tag-climate-change","tag-climate-fiction","tag-emily-buchanan","tag-emma-thompson","tag-fantasy","tag-greenpeace","tag-labour-government","tag-magical-realism","tag-protest","tag-reading-is-political","tag-right-to-protest","tag-send-flowers-novel","tag-tory-government"],"a3_pvc":{"activated":false,"total_views":0,"today_views":0},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1642"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1653,"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1642\/revisions\/1653"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}