Thank you for this review of Feel Everything! @catherineredford.bsky.social

Another enjoyable evening last night at @scripthavenltd.bsky.social Alchemy of Words - in conversation with @drruthstacey.bsky.social & Barbara Erskine about resilient women in literature. A really insightful conversation & engaged audience. One more event there for me - poetry panel tonight.

Your poems are your children. Love them. Tell other people you love them. Be ambitious for them. Don’t let them have their mates round when you’re not home.

Poets: what was your worst review? My favourites: (I, Ursula) 'This sounds like a feminist strain of madness.' & (How to Wear Grunge)'Here is an author that really hasn't got a clue: about poetry, language... sappy, half-arsed, melodramatic scribble...' Embrace the bad reviews, they need love too ❤️

I watched Twin Peaks and other David Lynch films as a young teen. I think Lynch created visuals that seared themselves inside my mind, often uncomfortably, full of colour symbolism, surrealness, rawness. Incredible filmmaker.

How many books did you read as a child, where the discovery of a concealed room was one of the most exciting parts of the story? Here's a post about secret rooms - and Bloody Chambers! steelthistles.blogspot.com/2016/07/secr...

Now this word can dance inside my mind in those sorrowful moments before the dawn. Perhaps it will chase the worries away.

If you sign up to my monthly newsletter (assuming I've got all the link right!) you'll now get a FREE novella, True Voyage is Return, which was written last year for a special project. dl.bookfunnel.com/w7t6xn5doh

Join me on Zoom next Mon Jan 13 (7-8.30-pm UK) to spot your writing habits/taboos & how you might be getting in your own way! Booking here - free & half price places for those who need - and if you can't make it live, all ticket-holders get the recording after: www.tickettailor.com/events/tania...

Still can't believe my story won second prize in Anna's competition...gave me a big kick of self belief in my prose writing. Thank you @annasmithwrites.bsky.social for choosing my story and for running the comp with such amazing prizes...

This is the best advice and just what I needed right now. Thanks @pascalepetit.bsky.social

Lost myself in this incredible book by @rachelartsmith.bsky.social 'the moment is repeated. and again. her folded. present. is spread out. a tablecloth.' The erasures and layering of voice create the subjective, decorative experience I am fascinated by in my current research.

One of the uplifting parts of my job are the conversations I have with writers who come to the Hive Library in Worcester. November's guest was the poet Sabeen Chaudhry who was generous with her insights into her craft. 📝📖

My recent collection www.serenbooks.com/book/youll-n...

Hey poets! Check out BERNADETTE MAYER's list of poetry experiments/prompts. Blow your mind and never be stuck again: www.writing.upenn.edu/library/Maye...

I’ve started a substack called CLARE’S POETRY CIRCLE. It’s free to read and subscribe. Today we’ve begun a readalong of Keats’ LAMIA 🐍🐍🐍 Do read part one and join the conversation! clarespoetrycircle.substack.com/p/reading-la...

I run a Reading Series event at the Hive Library, Worcester where I invite a writer to chat about their practice, followed by a reading of their latest work. My next guest is Sabeen Chaudhry 27th Nov. And it's free, just book through the library. 📖

A brilliant line up and it's free!

People ask me what books I recommend...here's one 📖

🌱 Today’s haiku: swans glide gently on a glass shard canal — winter paints their quiet path Feeling grateful on my morning run along the Edinburgh canal. (Image: Winter in Bruges, Belgium by Louis Joseph Reckelbus) #Haiku #Poetry #BlueSkyPoets

This is the first poem in Constructing a Witch @bloodaxebooks.bsky.social and the first poem I read at an event. Rahhh!

My 2024 has been books about women: freebleeding @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social with Charley Barnes, i get lost … @salopress.bsky.social with @galiamelon.bsky.social and Portrait in Mustard - Seren, with the speaker of my poems in a wardrobe of charity shop clothes ❤️

Pamela Colman Smith was a brilliant illustrator and a passionate, ambitious woman, underpaid and sidelined in her lifetime. She strived so hard for success and her frustration is palpable a century later. In a 1901 letter to Alfred Bigelow Paine, she wrote, “Pigs! The publishers are all pigs!?!”

love a good “O” in a poem, little fearless halo, the line’s volume knob turned all the way up, the stanza’s submarine window through which we glimpse an ocean of thought and feeling