A quick interruption of the 16 Days of Activism posts I’ve been doing for some happier news. My book The Art of Falling was awarded the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize yesterday. The Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize is awarded to a…
16 Days of Action Against Domestic Violence #day7
16 Days of Action Against Domestic Violence #Day7 Reasons you might stay in an abusive relationship *Perhaps the violence has crept up on you slowly. *Perhaps he apologises afterwards, and he’s genuinely sorry *Perhaps he won’t leave. How do you…
16 Days of Action Against Domestic Violence #day6
16 Days of Action Against Domestic Violence – Day 6 The painting above is by a fabulous artist called Fran Riley. It hangs in my living room to remind me what I know. Poets have always turned to myth and…
16 Days of Action Against Domestic Violence #day5
One must have a mind of winter The Snow Man by Wallace Stevens is one of my favourite poems. It is a poem that has haunted me. I didn’t love it straight away – the first time I read it,…
16 Days of Action Against Domestic Violence #day4
16 Days of Action Against Domestic Violence #day4 Whilst I was writing these poems, this sequence, once I realised that was what I was doing, I started to look around for other poets who had written about violence or trauma.…
16 Days of Action Against Domestic Violence – Day 3
16 Days of Action – day 3 A few years ago – I think maybe the summer of 2014, I booked onto a residential poetry course with Ian Duhig and Ruth Padel at Ty Newydd. It was a great week…
16 Days of Action against Domestic Violence #day2
16 Days of Action Against Domestic Violence – Day 2 There is a beautiful poem by the poet C.P. Cavafy called ‘Body, Remember’ or sometimes ‘Remember, Body’ depending on the translation. You can find one translation of it here but…
16 Days of Action Against Domestic Violence
I wanted to take part in this last year – but by the time I realised it was happening, half of the 16 days had gone. It seemed important to start at the beginning, to take part all the way…
The Garsdale Retreat – Residential Poetry Course
I’m really excited to be running a residential poetry course on behalf of The Garsdale Retreat, a creative writing centre ‘set in the heart of the remote and beautiful setting of the Yorkshire Dales’. The focus of the course is…
Sunday Poem – Matthew Stewart
I’ve had a busy week this week and spent much of it feeling a bit rough with a horrible cold that I only shook off on Wednesday night. On Monday I met my supervisor for a discussion about the poems…