'The Cloud Appreciation Society's Day Out'
- OUT NOW!!
Poetry collections are clearly like buses - you wait years and then two come along at once! I've just got this beautiful collection of my Pennine Watershed writings from my wonderful publisher (Ronnie Goodyer of Indigo Dreams), and am deeeelighted with it.
Do come along to the launch at Cliffe Castle Museum in Keighley (an astonishing place with chandeliers to die for!). The FREE launch is at 1pm on Saturday 3rd December - I'll be performing live from the collection, talking about the residency so far, and answering any questions about it. The launch will be held inside the Watershed exhibition which displays banners of my writing as well as films, listening posts, soundtrack of the moors, and work from lots of the community groups I have worked with throughout my year as writer-in-residence.
Do come along to the launch at Cliffe Castle Museum in Keighley (an astonishing place with chandeliers to die for!). The FREE launch is at 1pm on Saturday 3rd December - I'll be performing live from the collection, talking about the residency so far, and answering any questions about it. The launch will be held inside the Watershed exhibition which displays banners of my writing as well as films, listening posts, soundtrack of the moors, and work from lots of the community groups I have worked with throughout my year as writer-in-residence.
The exhibition also showcases the gorgeous artwork of the Watershed’s artist-in-residence – Angie Rogers.
How do you get hold of a copy?!!
Come along to the launch on the 3rd of Dec - or order it direct from me. 'The Cloud Appreciation Society's Day Out' makes an ideal gift for this season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
'The Thousand Natural Shocks' - out NOW!!
My fourth poetry collection 'The Thousand Natural Shocks' has
only been published for a month, and it has already won two awards! (The Purple Patch award, and The PoetryKit award) I am soooo chuffed! And I've been getting loads of really lovely feedback from people who've bought it. Order it here!
'TTNS' gives you a real emotional roller-coaster of a ride - it delves into the worlds of a 21st century Icarus, a dog in space, a pigeon blown off course, an Olympic bean-bag thrower, an ancient aunt who bellows about cunnilingus, and an allotment Viking - amongst many others! Experience the host of fabulously human – and humane – characters that are 'The Thousand Natural Shocks' !
Here's a lovely review by the excellent poet, Abegail Morley.
And, while you're waiting for your copy to arrive (!), here's a sample poem from TTNS:
We were parents
You played hide and seek
through our dreams for years
before you arrived.
Then, once we’d tigged you
– that squirm of blur
inside that pulsing screen –
we lay at night trying
not to giggle; straining
to hear your heartbeat.
You made us laugh a lot,
and disagree, and talk till 3am
of names, and whose nose you’d get.
And then you, who had lived
with us such a blink of time,
left.
And we are left, holding
onto nothing but naming books,
and our lurching world.
For you braced your whole
13cm self, and threw our
planet off its axis.
only been published for a month, and it has already won two awards! (The Purple Patch award, and The PoetryKit award) I am soooo chuffed! And I've been getting loads of really lovely feedback from people who've bought it. Order it here!
'TTNS' gives you a real emotional roller-coaster of a ride - it delves into the worlds of a 21st century Icarus, a dog in space, a pigeon blown off course, an Olympic bean-bag thrower, an ancient aunt who bellows about cunnilingus, and an allotment Viking - amongst many others! Experience the host of fabulously human – and humane – characters that are 'The Thousand Natural Shocks' !
Here's a lovely review by the excellent poet, Abegail Morley.
And, while you're waiting for your copy to arrive (!), here's a sample poem from TTNS:
We were parents
You played hide and seek
through our dreams for years
before you arrived.
Then, once we’d tigged you
– that squirm of blur
inside that pulsing screen –
we lay at night trying
not to giggle; straining
to hear your heartbeat.
You made us laugh a lot,
and disagree, and talk till 3am
of names, and whose nose you’d get.
And then you, who had lived
with us such a blink of time,
left.
And we are left, holding
onto nothing but naming books,
and our lurching world.
For you braced your whole
13cm self, and threw our
planet off its axis.
Here's some of the other stuff wot I have wrote !
I've won awards in poetry, short fiction and screenwriting, and in playwrighting for both radio and stage. My poetry and short fiction have been published widely in anthologies (eg with Comma Press and Route) and literary magazines such as Prospect, Mslexia and Chroma. I have had four poetry collections published; six of my plays have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4; and I have had seven stage plays produced, with one touring nationally. I have just finished a two-year tour with the excellent Some Girls' Mothers anthology - this is a series of creative non-fiction stories that six Northern poets wrote to try to capture that most formative of things: the mother-daughter relationship.
I love working with children and adults to get them inspired to write creatively, and have always got a stack of projects on the go at any one time, eg helping 4-year-olds to create and perform their own stories, taking deaf children out on the moors to fly kites and make sign-poems of their experiences, running CPD courses for secondary English teachers, working with 80-year-old engineers to help them tell their tales of producing the first artificial hip joints! I am also Lecturer in Creative Writing at Leeds Art and Design College, Writer-in-Residence for the Pennine Watershed (see my Watershed blog), and am also Writer-in-Residence for Hull University Business School. I tutor regularly for a wide range of writing groups, universities and the WEA.
I regularly work for museums, art galleries and out in the landscape using creative writing as a way of lighting up the experience for visitors - both adults and children. Creative writing is a great way of finding out what makes you, the world, and other people tick - and I love getting the opportunity of helping people find their own unique writing 'voice'.
Have a surf around my website to see what I'm up to - and do contact me if you'd like further info.
I love working with children and adults to get them inspired to write creatively, and have always got a stack of projects on the go at any one time, eg helping 4-year-olds to create and perform their own stories, taking deaf children out on the moors to fly kites and make sign-poems of their experiences, running CPD courses for secondary English teachers, working with 80-year-old engineers to help them tell their tales of producing the first artificial hip joints! I am also Lecturer in Creative Writing at Leeds Art and Design College, Writer-in-Residence for the Pennine Watershed (see my Watershed blog), and am also Writer-in-Residence for Hull University Business School. I tutor regularly for a wide range of writing groups, universities and the WEA.
I regularly work for museums, art galleries and out in the landscape using creative writing as a way of lighting up the experience for visitors - both adults and children. Creative writing is a great way of finding out what makes you, the world, and other people tick - and I love getting the opportunity of helping people find their own unique writing 'voice'.
Have a surf around my website to see what I'm up to - and do contact me if you'd like further info.
