Live Canon Poetry Pamphlet Comp win!

Some very delightful news indeed - I am one of four winners of Live Canon's inaugural poetry pamphlet competition! My pamphlet is called How High Did She Fly, the title is a quote from Arthur Miller's The Crucible, a play that I saw when I was a teenager which had a huge impact on me. Half the poems in the pamphlet are inspired by the women in The Crucible and riff on the themes of women, women's voices, magic... and flying! Congrats to my fellow winners, Katie Griffiths, Miranda Peake and Robin Houghton, our pamphlets will be published some time in November, and there will be a launch party, so stay tuned!

New poem, The Aunts

I was lucky enough, as writer in residence at Manchester Southern Cemetery, to have a poem commissioned by the Manchester Poetry Library for the Radość Pisania: Manchester Polish Poetry Festival 2018. They asked me to respond to the work of Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska, the “Polish Sappho” (born in Kraków 1891, died in Manchester 1945), who is buried in the cemetery, and it was such a joy to discover her work, and then take inspiration from it. I read the poem at her grave during the festival, it felt immensely special. Here's a teaser:

The Aunts

Goodness and badness, stray from them
equally, say the aunts, robust
as hens and tough as millet seeds. Some
look through the window, others

are solving puzzles in a corner, one
is painting my ceiling. Good
and bad? I say. The aunts shake
and nod their heads. Outside...


You can read the full poem here.

Bumper week of publications

I'm not sure in my 15 or so years of writing that I've ever had a week like this - three pieces (in different genres) published in seven days: an audio poem, a science-inspired flash story and my second ever published piece of creative non-fiction! Here are the links if you'd like to listen to/read them.

Spendid, First Draft Manchester



How You Are, science-inspired flash fiction in Synaesthesia magazine

Rewatching Grey's Anatomy, creative non-fiction in The Real Story


I also have three poems in the new issue of print mag Golden Handcuffs Review - details here if you'd like to purchase a copy.

3 writing workshops in June in the North

Come write with me, no previous writing experience necessary! I'm running three writing workshop in June:

June 1 A science-inspired flash workshop as part of the Northern Short Story Festival in Leeds. More details here.

June 8 A place-themed flash fiction workshop as part of the inaugural Victoria Baths Weekend of Words, in the Victoria Baths in Manchester. Details here.

June 23 A very special tour of Manchester's Southern Cemetery  & cross-genre writing workshop together with fabulous tour guide Emma Fox as part of the Didsbury Arts Festival. Details here.

Bringing Myself With Me

My first piece of narrative non-fiction, Bringing Myself With Me, inspired by the large amount of TV I've been watching while I've not been very well, has just been published by the excellent Syndicated magazine:

For once I’d like to watch TV without me. I’d like to leave myself in the other room, happily chatting on Twitter, writing a poem, or tidying up and just sit and stare at the screen. Why do I need to bring myself into everything I see, from Grey’s Anatomy and all the doctors falling for one another and saving lives and screwing up, to the young woman on Shrill finding her feet, to Vera, the older police inspector who solves crimes and then goes home alone? It’s a constant in my head, asking, “Am I like that?” “Is that me?” “Would I do what she did?” “Have I been there?” “Would I like to be?”

You can read the full piece here - I'm off to watch more telly! (I have another piece of narrative non-fiction on TV-watching forthcoming in The Real Story - watch this space.)