All Blogposts

A New Lyrical Ballads: Bristol Festival of Ideas

On Friday I went to the New Lyrical Ballads event in Bristol, part of Bristol Festival of Ideas, and listened to 23 poets read their specially commissioned poems for a new version of Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s 1798 collection. New Lyrical Ballads will be published this Spring and two Radio 4 programmes are also imminent. There were Read more

March 11, 2015
Pinch, punch, the redux

It’s the first of the month! First of March! Mornings are becoming lighter, nights are descending later, birdsong is sounding more exuberant. The crocuses are out! It’s a good time for exclamation marks! The year is still young enough to make plans! Taking stock. On the first of every month, at least one person arrives at this Read more

March 1, 2015
How to recruit volunteers

:Useful information for arts organisations and charities. One element of my part-time job with The Reader Organisation has been to recruit volunteers to work as Facilitators in the weekly Read Aloud Groups I’ve established in five (soon six) Wiltshire Libraries. The groups are specifically for people with dementia, or other illnesses affecting memory, and their carers. Challenging Read more

February 26, 2015
Low Blogging Energy, High Writing Energy!

Is this a thing? I think I’m experiencing it! I’m ploughing through my unfinished poems and despatching them to magazines at rates previously unknown to me. I have eight poems out with four different magazines. As most magazines take between 4 – 8 months to respond to submissions, I’ve decided to send them in twos Read more

February 21, 2015
Free online poetry courses

This post was originally published on 12 February 2015 but I’m going to keep adding to it as I hear of new courses. Here are the courses with links to registration forms and blurb from each site. I might see some of you in class! NEW! Ten Premodern Poems by Women – Stanford University – March 31 – June 9 Course Read more

February 12, 2015
Still writing every day?

I was wondering how your writing is going? I started off the year by resolving to write for at least one hour a day with all distractions (mostly social media feeds) switched off. It was much more straightforward when I was on leave from my paid, part-time (ha!) job but it has become more difficult Read more

February 10, 2015