It is the 4th of May 2019, a lovely sunny day here for our local City Council elections. I am volunteering at a local church community centre, where we are welcoming approximately two hundred newly arrived asylum seekers who have been accommodated in a local budget hotel. I am walking down to the local hygiene bank to collect donations of toiletries for them, as they have nothing with them and no money to buy anything.
I am accompanied by a young man from Eritrea who had arrived about a week previously. His English is good and as we walk he asks me about the local elections, what they are, what they mean and how they are different from general elections. I explain who we can vote for and what they do and he listens intently. On the way back when I have finished explaining, he smiles and says ‘I love this country’. He is so happy to be here, to have escaped the tyranny and conflict that is destroying his country, to have found somewhere where there is freedom.
Things have changed a lot since then. The hotels in our city are no longer used as accommodation for asylum seekers. A couple of weeks ago a young man from Eritrea was refused asylum and returned to France because he came across the channel in a small rubber boat.
I too still love this country, but then I am one of the lucky ones who has a right to stay. I also weep for it, as we see so much division, fear and hatred between us and our fellow human beings fleeing war and persecution. For me it is important, and my way of trying to p the record straight, to talk about the many people I met over more than eight years of working with asylum seekers and refugees. They were ordinary people with families and lives they wanted to live in the freedom our country has to offer. Therefore my poem of the month is:
Poem of the month October 2025
Getting Here(first published in my second Wayleave pamphlet in 2021). Go to Poem of the Month page
My writing life
Has been taken up with revising and editing poems for magazine submissions. I have recently subscribed to Robin Houghton’s monthly list of submissions windows for poetry magazines and September is a busy month. So only one new poem this month which I took to the Stanza group. I have made a note to myself to try to write some more soon. In the maelstrom of political violence, climate change and economic uncertainty it is, to say the least, hard to know where to start. Carol Ann Duffy’s poem that appeared in the Guardian the other day, State/Banquet says everything there is to be said about the recent state visit (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/sep/17/carol-ann-duffy-writes-bombsite-poem-about-trumps-uk-state-visit).
My reading life
While I read fiction on my Kindle, when it comes to non-fiction books I like a real paper one and at the moment I am reading Timothy Snyder’s On Freedom (Penguin Random House 2024). It is not a book to enjoy as much as a book to learn from, a challenging read.
A poem a day at the kitchen table. We finished Eliabeth Burns’ collection Held (Carcenet 2010) and have moved on to her posthumous collection The Lightkeepers (Wayleave 2016). Elizabeth was the person who first introduced me to a writing group and got me writing poetry seriously. The Wednesday Women Writers met, and still meet, in each other’s houses every week to share and workshop poetry and prose writing. Elizabeth, who died ten years ago, was a friend and mentor for me. Her posthumous collection includes a number of ekphrastic poems about visual art and music.
We are also reading from Amber, a collection by Iris Ann Lewis, (Graffiti 2024) whom I met and worked with on my recent visit to Ty Newydd. I discovered that I share with her my interest in archaeology and prehistory.
Both these excellent women poets have caused us to Google the people and places they reference, which has added another layer of interest to our daily poetry readings. Because of their carefully researched work we have learned about the Woman of Dolni Vestanice and the Danish painter Hammershoi. (Go on! Google them for yourself!)
Hare in the headlights
Earlier this month I did some voice coaching for members of our Stanza group who were reading at this year’s Morecambe Poetry Festival. I also read at the Stanza Showcase on the 18th September at the King St Studio in Lancaster. This latter was a great evening and lovely to hear and enjoy the richness and variety of the work that our group is currently writing.
In October I am hoping to read at the open mic at an event in Kendal organised by Joy Howard, of grey hen books, and where Pauline Yarwood, Ilse Pedler and Kerry Darbyshire will be reading to raise funds for Save the Children’s work in Gaza. (Tuesday 14th October, 7.00-8.30 pm, Outside-in Children’s Centre, Beezom Road, Kendal, LA9 6EL)
That’s it for now