Poetry and Perfumery: How Literature Shaped My Life as a Perfumer in Bordeaux

Someone asked me recently whether there’s any connection between the Irish poets I studied in graduate school and my work in perfumery.

The question unlocked a cascade of loosely connected ideas  and, eventually, a very clear thread.

I stumbled into my BA in literature almost by accident, then dove headlong into an MA and PhD in English Literature. Along the way, I unearthed a deep love for contemporary Irish women poets who were writing their way out from under a monumental, intensely patriarchal literary tradition.

At first, it felt like an odd pairing, Irish women poets and perfume. But when I returned to those books, I found the answer everywhere in the lines and between the lines. In their work, I found gardens, greenhouses, eucalyptus trees, Eavan Boland’s « steam and greenness, » jasmine, ivy, woods, flooded fields, seedy greens and reeds. Page after page, poem after poem, the natural world is everywhere: buds, branches, fruit, vegetables, hedgerows, grasses. The landscape isn’t just a backdrop; it’s a vibrant, living presence.

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As a new mother, this connection to place and memory felt even more tangible. I’d bring my son to the old growth forests of the  Pacific Northwest, just as my father once brought me to the gentle grassy hills and wooded areas of Indiana; the trails were different, separated by the breadth of the country, but the activity was similar and I felt this at a visceral level, breathing in the same fragrances: green, damp, forest floor, undergrowth, moss, and trees. 

Three generations, different landscapes tied together by the natural world, countless scents and stories quietly passing between us.

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The same skills I honed as a reader — close attention, sensitivity to nuance, love of language — now guide me as I build accords and choose raw materials. I’m still working with memory, atmosphere, and place… just in a different medium. 

Words once held this on the page. 

Now, scent holds this in the air.

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Years later, life and family brought me to Europe, and ultimately to France. Settling in Bordeaux - a region defined by its own landscapes, seasons, and terroir - made that earlier fascination with place and « greenness » feel even more tangible.

When I began my training as a perfumer, I suddenly found myself surrounded by another kind of language for landscape: raw materials.

Galbanum: green, bitter, complex.
Virginia cedar: dry, woody, freshly sharpened pencil shavings.
Osmanthus: apricot and leather.
Pink pepper: bright, sharp, spicy.
Tuberose: a flash of wintergreen opening into thick, creamy white petals.
Vetiver, bergamot, patchouli, orris, blackcurrant bud with its strange, sparkling green fruitiness…

Learning to build soliflore accords and work with these materials taught me to « read » scent the way I had been taught to read poetry: slowly, attentively, one note at a time, always looking for layers of meaning.

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And then there was my mother-in-law, who quietly deepened this connection to the natural world. She was an eternal observer: paddling a kayak, skiing, hiking, cycling, always gathering information about trees, insects, vernal pools. In 1953 she cycled alone through post-war England, photographing landscapes, stone churches, architectural details. She preserved everything in heavy journals with frayed edges, and in the evenings she’d lay them out, narrating the story behind each image.

Her way of looking — patient, curious, rooted in place — feels very close to the way I now approach perfumery here, in Europe, in France: studying the vineyard light in Bordeaux, the moss on old stone walls, the particular shade of green in a garden at dusk, and then searching for the raw materials that can convey those impressions.

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It turns out the bridge between Irish poetry and French perfumery is paved with greens, with words, with the quiet act of paying attention. 

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