A Poetry Catch-Up

It's been a while since I posted a poetry update here, and that's because it's been a really quiet year after the hurly burly of launching and giving readings from my 2024 collection, 'Love the Albatross'. The rest has been much needed; there's something uniquely exhausting about reading poems so painfully close to personal experience as estrangement is to mine. I'm pleased to have made something positive out of a base situation, and to have made connections with others struggling to carry the same burden, but at the same time, I'm glad to have left those poems behind me now. (Apart from the copies of 'Love the Albatross' I have left; message me via social media or the comment function here if you'd like me to post one to you.)

The good news is that I'm continuing to write my way back; I might even start considering myself a poet again soon, which is a relief as that's basically my entire identity. And a smattering of poems have found their forever homes.  

One of those destinations is The Hen, a new poetry magazine based in Bristol, and it was a delight to read at the launch of the first issue, held at the jewel that is Heron Books in Clifton, a few nights ago. Thanks for Nicola Heaney and Marie-Louise Eyres for publishing my poem and inviting me along to read it.) 

You can read the first issue of  The Hen here. 

Though my favourite gig by far this year was at the school for deaf children where I work, when I was invited to talk to our Year 2 children about being a poet. I also got to hear - and see in sign language - the inventive kennings they'd come up with. 

And I was able to tell the children about meeting two of my very favourite poets, Ilya Kaminsky and Raymond Antrobus, who are both Deaf. 

In April I read at Lyra Bristol Poetry Festival, as part of the Street! project which featured poems by poets tasked with responding creatively to the city's neighbourhoods and geo-located across thirteen Bristol libraries ... 

... and in July as a guest of the organisers of the annual Resonate barbecue in the shady garden of St Stephen's Church, just off the city centre, which, coming at the end of a very hot day, was blessedly cool and a welcome pleasure.

I also finally got to read at the Berkeley Square Poetry Revue, after having to duck out back in March, when I completely lost my voice for several days. This subsequent reading, alongside poets Daniel Richardson and Rebecca Shamash, and accompanied by music from the hugely talented Teri Bramah, made for a bubble of creative wonder and was a welcome distraction from what was, for me, a difficult summer.