Tag: poetry

  • DM World Culture Project

    DM World Culture Project

    16th January 2018 A few weeks ago, I was asked if I would get involved in a co-produced World Collections project run by Derby Museums. The basic premise was to produce a piece of writing from a collection of words gathered by the local community – words that were felt to unite everyone across the…

  • 19th February 2013

    Yellow Roses It’s been a while since I’ve blogged, in fact, I hadn’t even checked in to this wordpress site, so I was really pleased to see that some of you have still been dropping by to read my old posts… a big thank you to you! Today, a poem, written last night, straight out, as it…

  • 28th September 2012

    A Blade of Grass What is it that guides our choices as a writer? I don’t just mean regarding genre choice, I mean subject matter, theme, characterisation, dialogue, setting, the way we want our writing to feel, the tone.  Do we want it to be realistic and grounded or do we want to create something…

  • 22nd June 2012

    Cup of tea My Grandma died 7  years ago of cancer.  We were close in that sense of feeling completely comfortable together and being able to share a multitude of things, one of which was a sense of humour, the other being a love of words.  Grandma regularly did the crossword and we always played Scrabble…

  • 8th June 2012

    Weaving Words I’ve often thought about the parallel between sewing and weaving, and writing, but always in relation to writing poetry.  It’s a metaphor that has been used by writers before, as has the technique of quilting, and these metaphors can also apply to life, community and the weaving together of cultures and histories.  The…

  • 25th May 2012

    An Indiscriminate Moonlight Being a bit short of blogability time this week, I thought I’d post one of my poems, and a picture of me in my new funky writing specs… just because they’re new and they’re funky (aubergine with turquoise over the ear bits) and the words would be a lump of grey without them!…

  • 9th March

    Girl with red hair There’s a kind of dichotomy, I think, between writing that takes on a fantastical element, and writing that is gritty and very real.  Some writers will say they write to escape, submerged in their own world.  Others, that writing puts them in touch with themselves and helps them to realise who they…

  • 3rd February

    A Poem Sometimes writing – what I think of as ‘proper writing’ goes a bit awol.  It happens to the best of us I think… life gets in the way, we’re tired, distracted, anxious, or all of these.  Sometimes we have to push through this and there’s no doubt in my mind that writing is…

  • 13th January

    Let me tell you about gates… Last year, I was lucky enough to attend a poetry writing workshop hosted by Derbyshire County Council.  They do quite a lot of these types of workshops – always enjoyable and a great opportunity to meet fellow writers and have a good chin-wag about writerly kind of things.  This particular one…

  • 16th December

    The Jewish Quarter When I think about what sparks my writing and what sparks other people’s, it’s astonishing how diverse the influences are.  I often find that there are so many triggers that I end up with more ideas and notes in notepads and scribbled on to random bits of paper, than time to explore them.  I’m sure a…