Josephine Corcoran is a writer, originally from the north west of England and now based in west Wiltshire.
My new poetry chapbook, Love and Stones, is now available from Live Canon. This is a collection of 20 poems of love, family and the climate crisis, set in a Wiltshire landscape of standing stones and henges in the days of heatwaves, a global pandemic and turbulent times.
My other professional credits include a full poetry collection What Are You After? (Nine Arches Press, 2018) and a poetry pamphlet The Misplaced House (tall-lighthouse, 2014); a radio play The Songs that Houses Sing – The House in Tamworth Park (broadcast on BBC Radio 4Extra, 2018, and on BBC Radio 4, 2000); and a stage play Jocasta (performed at the Chelsea Theatre in 1997). My short story Algebra, winner of the Ian St James Award in 1996, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4Extra in 2018 and on BBC Radio 4 in 1997.
I also make collage-based text and image pieces and visual poetry (VisPo) which I post on Instagram. One of my visual pieces was made into a badge for The Printed Poetry Symposium organised by Angie Butler (Centre for Print Research) at the Arnolfini, Bristol in October 2021 and other visual work can be seen on the National Poetry Library’s website; The Poetry School’s website; and at Angel House Press.
I love working with different groups and I’ve blogged about workshops I’ve run in schools, museums, libraries and community settings. I trained with and worked for The Reader Organisation (2013-15), facilitating read aloud groups for people living with dementia and memory loss which I wrote about here. I worked as a teaching assistant in a comprehensive school (2007-10) and completed writer in school training with The National Literacy Trust. Young people I’ve worked with have been successful in several national poetry competitions, including the Betjeman Poetry Prize, Armistice 100, the Somerset Young Poets Competition, Live Canon Children’s Competition and All Write.
Since 2010, more than 50 of my poems have been published in literary journals including Poetry Ireland Review, The Rialto, Poetry Wales, The North, Magma, The Manchester Review, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Under the Radar, Butcher’s Dog and elsewhere. I’ve won the Stafford Poetry Prize and Buzzwords Poetry Competition, and been a runner up or commended in The Bridport Prize, Grist Poetry Competition, the Live Canon International Poetry Competition and the Teignmouth Poetry Competition. I’ve performed my work at UK poetry festivals including Ledbury and Aldeburgh. More details at News.
I founded and, until 2023 edited, the online poetry site And Other Poems and I organise a poetry group, Trowbridge Stanza, at Drawing Projects UK, in Trowbridge. I have a SoundCloud page.
I grew up in a loving family entirely dependent on state benefits for income and I spent part of my childhood in foster care. I started writing aged 30, while a mature student at Bournemouth University and Chichester University. In 1996 I was awarded funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to study for an MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia.
Jonathan Edwards reviewed my full collection What Are You After? (Nine Arches Press, 2018) at Poetry Wales. Anthony Wilson featured my poem about drones in his Lifesaving Poems series. Maria Taylor wrote about my first pamphlet here. Helena Nelson wrote about it here.
Recent poems and reviews I’ve written are listed on this site here.
If you’ve read this far, you know quite a lot about me! I’ve been blogging since 2010 so there are lots of articles and posts to read, take a look here.
Josephine Corcoran 