In any study of nature, there must be some attempt to grapple with the cycles of life. Maggie MacKellar has perhaps had more cause than most to contemplate these rhythms. In Graft, which is billed as a memoir of motherhood, family, and a year on the land, she offers poignant reflections on all of these topics. A memoir through this territory might be easily dismissed by some – let’s leave aside for now how absurd that is – and there’s a fine line between the profound and the mundane, particularly when exploring love and loss, but MacKellar’s prose is as clear and bracing as the bodies of water in which she loves to swim.

Having spent time in childhood staying with her grandparents on their farm in New South Wales, MacKellar finds comfort in the patterns of their days. Her sensibilities are attuned to that beloved landscape, which has always drawn her in, rewarded her curiosity, and offered sanctuary. As readers of her earlier works would know, such respite has been necessary at times. Some years after the devastation and upheaval of being widowed shortly before the birth of her second child, and of losing her mother not long after, MacKellar’s life changes course again and she finds herself moving with her new partner to a farm in Tasmania. The land is not familiar; neither is the weather. The rhythms of this new home must be learned, even as the climate crisis disrupts them.

It is not just the seasons on the land, however, that interest MacKellar. In running a sheep farm, for merino wool and meat, she is surrounded by, and invested in, the cycles of life around her – both cultivated and wild. There are, of course, parallels between the lives she observes and the life she is living, but the bold, poetic connections she makes between them are striking. MacKellar’s reflections on her mother’s life, and on the phases of motherhood, are especially moving. Graft is a deeply affecting and vital literary offering.