Jorhat, May 24: British poet and writer Elizabeth Darcy Jones finds the lush tea gardens of Assam so inspiring that she plans to visit the state next year to pen a potful of poems about tea and tea growers.

“I am thinking of visiting the state in 2012 as my next volume of poems will have a section devoted to Assam tea. Given Assam’s importance in tea culture and production and the whole ritual of tea drinking, I need to ‘steep’ in the landscape and meet some of Assam’s tea people,” Elizabeth said, when contacted in an email.

The poet said she was trying to re-establish an ancient tradition of writing poetically about tea.

“The 8th century Chinese scholar, Lu Yu, is reputed to have chanted poetry before being able to write the classic ‘Ch’a Ching’ The Classic of Tea. Tea has also inspired many Japanese poems,” said the British poet and writer.

The British writer has been writing poems on tea for over several years now and already she has complied a volume of 37 poems of tea — Distinguished leaves: poems for tea lovers — which include a poem on Margaret Hope, a tea estate in Darjeeling. The volume, which also has a poem on Assam tea, will hit the stands later this year.

The poem on Assam tea that Elizabeth wrote goes: Girls who love an all-night raver. Scottish lassies prone to claver. Wrap their fingers round a cup. Of Assam tea when they wake up. Musclemen will never waver. When you ask them for a favour. If you serve them Assam first. Reminds them of their deeper thirst! Women, wearing lives of labour. Like a tea with bags of flavour. Sure to stop them feeling down: Assam is their choice of brown. Art Garfunkel loves to savour Assam (and his semi-quaver sings to lyrics in tea’s praise) Assam, Assam tea always!

“Although I have written a poem on it, I still have to investigate deep into Indian tea or for that matter Assam tea, and so I have decided to visit Assam,” she said.

The poet said in the mail, “The natural language of tea is poetry — turn tea into characters and characters into tea! I suspect that the ‘Assam Tea’ characters will have a common quality of boldness and strength about them. We shall see”.

Former chairman of the Assam Tea Planters’ Association, Raj Barooah, said it was good news that a British poet would visit the state to write poems on Assam tea.

“Assam tea is exotic since it is the birthplace of tea. Tea used to grow wild in Assam and the Singpho tribe in the state have been drinking it for several centuries now before the British discovered it. Assam is the place for someone to write poems on tea,” Barooah said.

Echoing, Barooah, a tea planter in Tinsukia district said the British poet would also have the opportunity to meet the people from the Singpho tribe, some of whom still prepare tea using centuries-old traditional methods.