Yes folks, I have a new writing partner. Well, he doesn’t actually do much of the writing but he certainly insists upon curling up beside me as I type and occasionally chews the laptop. I’m sure he has a novel in him yet. He’s 8 weeks old and adorable. Sadly Ralph won’t be coming to any of my events in ...

Hello again. Just a little note to say I’m very pleased to be guest editing the next issue of the fabulous Butcher’s Dog poetry magazine which is just about to close for submissions. I’m excited to read all the poems so be sure to email your submission by Sunday!

The lovely folk at Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre chose BOOM! as their poem of the week. I subscribe to OBPC and enjoy finding their weekly selections in my inbox, so it was a very pleasant surprise indeed when I opened up this week’s email and found my own poem there. A nice precursor to the final set of Writing Motherhood ...

Hello there! Good to see you again. Did you have a nice Christmas? A good New Year’s? Excellent. Yes, mine was actually pretty awesome. I’ve got big plans for 2015. First up are the final three Writing Motherhood events at StAnza (with Hollie McNish and Kathryn Maris), the York Literature Festival (with CL Taylor and Nuala Casey), and the Dylan ...

Wanted to share the filmpoem made by Melissa Diem of my poem ‘Hare’, which was placed in the National Poetry Competition top ten winning poems (out of 12,000 entries!) back in March. I was going through a really tough time at the beginning of the year so it was especially nice to get a phone call from Judith Palmer at ...

October 24th, 2014 I am a little over halfway through my Writing Motherhood tour so I thought it was high time I get cracking and post something about how it’s all been going. So: a recap. After finishing BOOM! – my poetry collection about motherhood – I found I wasn’t quite done with the whole motherhood discussion. I wanted to ...

‘Voicing Shadow, Singing Light’ is a blog series designed to tear down barriers of silence that perpetuate suffering from mental illness and deadly last resorts. In August I put a call out on Facebook and Twitter requesting poems that articulate some aspect of mental illness – whether as sufferer, survivor, carer or friend. The response has been overwhelming – hundreds …

Voicing Shadow, Singing Light’ is a blog series designed to tear down barriers of silence that perpetuate suffering from mental illness and deadly last resorts. In August I put a call out on Facebook and Twitter requesting poems that articulate some aspect of mental illness – whether as sufferer, survivor, carer or friend. The response has been overwhelming – hundreds …

Voicing Shadow, Singing Light is a blog series designed to tear down barriers of silence that perpetuate suffering from mental illness and deadly last resorts. In August I put a call out on Facebook and Twitter requesting poems that articulate some aspect of mental illness – whether as sufferer, survivor, carer or friend. The response has been overwhelming – hundreds …

Voicing Shadow, Singing Light is a blog series designed to tear down barriers of silence that perpetuate suffering from mental illness and deadly last resorts. In August I put a call out on Facebook and Twitter requesting poems that articulate some aspect of mental illness – whether as sufferer, survivor, carer or friend. The response has been overwhelming – hundreds of poems flooded …