All Blogposts

  • A few poetry notes

    A few poetry notes

    Last week I  mentioned that the Poetry Society had a callout for poems that take note, in some way, of 99 of the mostly commonly used words used in 40 years of the National Poetry Competition.  I wasn’t going to write anything for this because I thought it was too much of a distraction from… Read more

  • Snowed in

    Snowed in

    Goodbye, January.  You weren’t that bad…. actually, you were bad but, weirdly, I still felt a tenderness towards you when I turned the page of our calendar. And just as you said goodbye and made way for  February,  you let fall a skyful of snow. which held me hostage in my house for a day… Read more

  • Finding your way into a poem

    Finding your way into a poem

    It’s been really helpful to read these posts by poets writing about how they find their way into poems:  “Writing” Towards Writing by Pam Thompson and fearless creating by Julie Mellor.  As well as containing useful and practical advice, the posts are a comforting reminder that I’m not alone in finding writing hard going at… Read more

  • Slow January continues

    Slow January continues

    There’s that joke about January lasting hundreds of days and then the rest of the year whizzing by in the blink of an eye.  That’s definitely what I’ve been experiencing.  I was just beginning to recover from my knee operation and then I somehow managed to contract viral pneumonia – so my January has definitely… Read more

  • A very quiet start to the year

    A very quiet start to the year

    New Year was extremely quiet – very much like Christmas.  I’m still recovering from (minor) knee surgery and ‘cycling’ on my static bike every most days.  At the moment, I’m listening to The Leopard described on BBC iPlayer as  “Giuseppe Di Lampedusa’s gorgeous masterpiece of European political fiction, translated by Archibald Colquhoun, abridged by Sara… Read more

  • School for Writers with the National Literacy Trust

    School for Writers with the National Literacy Trust

    In November 2018, I was lucky enough to attend two days of training with the National Literacy Trust to update and improve my skills as a writing workshop facilitator in schools. The course was based in Victoria Park Primary School, an absolutely lovely school in Bristol, and facilitated by Fay and Tim from the National… Read more