About

Home for me is both rural Thailand and Yorkshire. I am happy to live and create in these two areas and am constantly inspired by the landscape, history and culture of both places.

I developed a love of the land from a young age, and the local community provided me with the opportunity to nurture this passion.

I write about the more-than-human world and the need to live in right relationship with all sentient beings.

First poetry collection from Ruth Leader Satsi, a Thai-British poet. These beautifully crafted, evocative pieces take the reader to the heart of Ruth’s home.

I create botanical cynotypes inspired by the plants and flowers that grow on the land I share with the more-than-human world which are developed using both sunlight and moonlight.

threading rak flowers

Ruth L. Satsi

With gorgeous imagery and poetic brushstrokes, the narrative in this piece slowly unfolds into an exploration of memory and mutism. The contrast and fragmentation of the floral descriptions with the implied violence impressed many of us, who found this to be the seed of a brilliant book in development.

Moving between Thailand and Britain, threading rak flowers is an intimate conversation with plants and flowers, and an exploration of how one event can change a life. In six sections mirroring the life cycle of the flower, this book pieces together Ruth L. Satsi’s memories, reflecting on the gun attack which caused her family to relocate to the UK, and the period of mutism which followed, where her strongest bond was to the animate plant world around her.

Ruth L. Satsi is a teacher, writer, mother and amateur radical botanist born in rural Thailand, based in Yorkshire/Chiangmai, Thailand, currently working in Chengdu, China, with the University of Leeds. Her writing explores how plants have profoundly shaped human experience both personally and culturally and how the honouring of plants’ liveliness and animation is part of the Thai tradition.

She is the author of a poetry collection, The Peacock Room, which was shortlisted for the Jerwood Aldeborough First Collection Prize and Village of Red Rice: Autofiction – a love song to rural Thailand and to the more-than-human world.

In Spring/Summer 2024 I will be running wild writing circles at the Himalayan Garden and Sculpture Park in Ripon, North Yorkshire.

I completed an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Hull during which time I wrote a dissertation on soundscapes.

In 2024 i will be artist/writer in residence at resartist.org in Mae Rim, Chiangmai Thailand during which time I will be writing about the local flora and running wild writing circles for local people.