Poetic alchemy
As a young child I wrote poetry, badly but enthusiastically, secretly. I then did an English degree which involved, of course, reading lots of poetry. I continued to scribble down verses of my own but the degree was more concerned with the deconstruction and analysis of other people’s poems.
I’ve always fancied doing a creative … Read more
How I let the pandemic change me – work
My mum studied with the Open University when I was a child. I remember her being moved by the poems of Heaney and Ted Hughes. She read us the poems and who knows whether it was her passion that led me to my literature degree. She didn’t finish hers, the demands of single parenting in … Read more
Head, hand, heart, earth
I was born learning.
We were all born learning.
A friend who is the deputy head of a large primary and junior school told me sadly that when the children arrive in the education system, they are like sponges; open, curious, questioning, learning is as air. By the time they leave, they are bored, anxious … Read more
Creative writing
I have written books. A couple I self-published and there are still gremlins in my head sneering ‘That’s not real publishing, it’s vanity, who cares, you’re not good enough’. That was the same voice asking me who I thought I was as I walked to corridor to meet my PhD supervisor for the first … Read more
We serve no one when we play small
I was on a permaculture course,
Life changing;
The ideas, systems,
the people,
wise,
interested and interesting,
synthesising experience,
weaving webs of new understanding.
One of us,
post-doctoral researcher,
unsure,
if she could venture
into academia alone,
without
a university at her shoulder.
Keeping her voice small,
When her work,
is game changing,
life … Read more
Sustainable or regenerative?
Until I did my Permaculture Design Course with Steve Jones, I didn’t really pay attention to the words in the title. In my head ‘sustainable’ and ‘regenerative’ were synonymous, I hadn’t bothered to unpack them until I started to listen to Steve and Ian Steele, whose farm the course was held on.
Sustainable agriculture … Read more