Skeleton Architecture

I want to draw your attention to the amazing poem by Jacqueline Saphra - Cimex Lectularius, which you'll find here  if you scroll down. I love how Jacqueline purposefully meanders through ideas, starting with the bed bug of the title and wandering to seemingly unlikely destinations, before turning back and bringing it together. I particularly love the callousness of the last line which applies to everything and so much more besides. That poem is a stroke of genius. I'm not a genius, so I figured I'd use a technique borrowed from Kamsin Kaneko , using some of the words from the original poem to craft one of my own. I did it a few weeks ago in this post , creating a library themed version of Mary Oliver's Wild Geese. The words I chose to pinch from Cimex Lectularius are as follows: I have learned this week that... and that... which reminds me of... which causes me to wonder... like that... which leads me back... Perhaps... As you can see, they're the directiona

Hi! Another day of good news! My poem, 'The times that don't happen' is in First Literary Review East today! You'll find it here  but keep scrolling - it's the penultimate one. And that's it. No more news. I have no other plans. Well, I do, but they're secret, and possibly nefarious, stay tuned!

Hi all, There's a poetry magazine that I love - Picaroon Poetry - I love its style, I love that it's easy to access, and I love the poetry choices the editor, Kate Garrett makes, so I've been trying to get one of my pieces in for a while now, and I'm delighted that I've managed to get one in at last, especially just now, while she's on a reduced output because of her maternity leave. I'm particularly delighted because the poem she's picked was one inspired by a postcard my friend Rose gave me to inspire some creativity (pictured here). Like Rose, I'm keen to point out that it's not based on any real feeling, although maybe it comes out of jealousy - that kind of poetry does sell! Mind you, it's also the kind of poetry that I get the impression people are talking about when they tell me that they don't really like poetry, which I can understand. I don't really like crime novels, but I think that's because I'm reading the wr

Kamsin Kaneko has just started a new poetry prompt over on her blog HERE , and for the first one she chose this poem, Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver, to provide inspiration. I hadn't come across it before, but it's widely available on the internet, here it is again for you, if you've not had the pleasure: Wild Geese - by Mary Oliver You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and

The above quote comes from a writing exercise provided by the Glasgow Women's Library at their most recent, online, Open the Door event. The exercises were inspired by the work of Muriel Spark who was born 100 years ago, so I'm guessing it is a quote from one of her works.  This is from the first exercise. You have to use one of the quotes provided to start a story, and just keep going until you're done.  You can have a go too, you'll find   the exercises here. This is mine (with links to The Literary Gift Company and Etsy stores to buy the things in my imagined shop). Let me know if you do one of the exercises too, I'd love to see it.

A lot of people tell me that they don't like poetry, and to be honest, I get it. I was at a thing at the weekend where a bunch of people were sitting around sharing poems and lots of those poems were by dead white men and although I could say they might have had literary merit they were for the most part old and stale and boring (sorry, dead white men). The thing is that there is a massive explosion of poetry going on right now, that isn't stale, that isn't particularly male (although you wouldn't know that looking at some publications ahem), and that isn't always pale. At the thing I was at at the weekend only two people (both of us women) read poems by women and I was pretty fed up about the whole thing. I didn't want to just stamp my feet and tell the men to read more women, more living poets, just something new! That's only going to prove to them that women aren't particularly reasonable, so I figured I would do something positive instead. T

Hi all Just to let you know that the May edition of Peeking Cat magazine is now available (with one of my tankas in it). It's not yet on their website ( here ), although you will find details there for submissions to their 2018 anthology (poetry, flash fiction, and artwork/photography). You've got ages to put a submission together as the window closes on 31st August. You can buy a hard copy of May's Peeking Cat magazine for just £2.99 from here , OR you can download it for free from here . It's got a gorgeous wee cat on the cover too.

Yay! Sun! I always have the notion when the sun appears that perhaps it's time to put the gloves and hats away, but Scotland has had me in training and so they are all still out... They'll go away for a bit come June. May Sun in Scotland Then came the sun and, desperate for light we threw our bodies in its path, heedless of the wind; relentless giver of goosebumps on our bare flesh. We went outside and talked with our neighbours, swapping the pent up stories for what seemed to be the first time in months. Stories come out in the sun. All that was held in through the long dreary months: of grey, khaki, and brown; of the world rubbed out by gathering cloud; of the tears that fall in rain. But the wind still chilled and killed the new blooms and it would not fucking stop. And then this: It did. We had sun and warmth and bare skin and barbecues for at least two days. Three perhaps, if you  count the day the rain came back. But it did come back

Hello all, thought I'd share my good news with you this morning.  First up... I've managed to get a poem into the prestigious online poetry magazine, Ink, Sweat & Tears. It's called Before the Weighing, and it's inspired by Jane Hirshfield's poem, The Weighing, which is all about the idea of weighing your soul against a feather to see if you're fit to enter heaven. I totally had the scene in American Gods (here's the clip, watch out for fruity language at the end) where that happens in my head when I was writing it, even though that was missing the lioness, can't imagine why. Anyway, the poem is there TODAY, so grab it while it's hot,  HERE . Another place I've been trying and trying to get a poem into is the fabulous Picaroon Poetry  and on what was going to be my last attempt I got in! Not only did I get in but it's with a poem which I wrote at a mini poetry retreat with my late friend Rose, who gave me so much inspiration to b

Today I'm going to share with you a really interesting and inspiring poem by Sarah Williams. I think it's pretty well known in North America, but I first heard about it when I heard the last line (above) which is just perfect for gothy types, quoted by Mistress Margot Meanie. Here, for your delight, is the poem in full*: The Old Astronomer to His Pupil Reach me down my Tycho Brahe, I would know him when we meet, When I share my later science, sitting humbly at his feet; He may know the law of all things, yet be ignorant of how We are working to completion, working on from then to now. Pray remember that I leave you all my theory complete, Lacking only certain data for your adding, as is meet, And remember men will scorn it, 'tis original and true, And the obloquy of newness may fall bitterly on you. But, my pupil, as my pupil you have learned the worth of scorn, You have laughed with me at pity, we have joyed to be forlorn, What for us are all distractions o

I was recently lucky enough to provide a poetry inspired writing workshop for a young writer's group at one of our local libraries. Some brilliant work came out of it, so I thought I'd share the workshop with you, to spread the joy of a bit of inspiration. I was thinking about time. FYI Salomé (which is currently on hiatus due to illness) is hoping to have a theme of 'time' for its Spring issue. Check out this link to their submissions page to see when they're back up and running. I was also thinking about our communications with ourselves at different times of our lives, the 'if I'd known then what I know now' moments. In poems, these can take the form of advice to our perhaps younger selves, statements of intent about how we will behave in the future, or observations of people at a particular stage of life to share some kind of truth about it. I shared a few poems with the young writers group to give examples, making sure we had time to chat abo