An Interview about the poem ‘Definition’ taken from Farmotherlands
(This blog was first published on Substack as part of the Thrutopia collection. The editor for the piece after the poem was Ana Salote. ‘Thrutopia’ was an initiative I attended, curated by Manda Scott. It was a creative and educational project encouraging us to consider not utopias (idealised futures) or dystopias (the worst imaginable … Read more
It takes a community to write a book
(This first appeared as a guest blog for Booka Bookshop, Oswestry).
I grew up with the image of the lonely artist; Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, James Joyce sitting in the lonely garret writing in splendid isolation. I accepted that Wordsworth really did wander lonely as a cloud and that Yeats wrote about things falling … Read more
Why VE day makes me feel uncomfortable
Hmmmm. VE day makes me feel awkward
8th May 1945
I can’t imagine how it must have felt on 8th May 1945 for all that atrocity to end. Or start to end. My dad remember the troops rolling through the city and the smell of fresh bread. I can’t imagine.
I understand the need to … Read more
Violets, oaks and how we are all connected
Violets
Have you noticed how many violets there are this year?
The warmer weather has drawn them out. They peep from the hedgerows, the verges, the woodland. Tiny, purple, delicate. This year they have had a chance to bloom before the more robust plants like nettles and grasses crowd them out. They glow in the … Read more
New connections and why community is important
Thank you all for your lovely messages about the launch…I’m really glad it has created so many connections.
Here’s one of the poems from the collection:
And here is an essay about the poem, but also about the launch and my thinking around community and why it matters.
… Read more‘Ultimately, I think it is connection that
Can you make yourself invisible (and then very visible)
Last week I was out just after dawn and at the top of a hill, where I always stand for a moment of gratitude (at the view, but also that I can still get up the hill!), I saw a fox.
It was at the bottom of the field, running diagonally across it in the … Read more