and take responsibility for it. This month’s title is paraphrased from the book I have just finished reading, Timothy Scheider’s On Freedom.

It is simple, yes, but not simplistic, and pertinent because this month I want to talk about immigration. You may well ask what has this to do with my life, or yours, as a poet? I will refer you at once to Benjamin Zephania’s poem The British. In his recipe style description of the richness of our country, he reminds us of the diversity of our culture here in Britain, and that we are all of us migrants.

Some years ago, I gave a talk in a community centre to a group of about 40 people. I started by asking everyone to raise a hand if they were born in the UK, and most people did. Then I asked them to lower their hands if their parents were not born in the UK. A few did, then I asked the same question about grandparents, a lot more hands went down and then great grandparents, at which point there were hardly any hands left raised.

While I worked for eight years for a charity helping asylum seekers and refugees, I felt a strong need to write, and specifically to write poems, about my encounters with them. It was difficult to decide how to approach the subject as a white woman and a British citizen, without feeling condescending and intrusive. What could I presume to know of their culture and their experiences? Over the time of writing those poems I found a way. I avoided making assumptions about the people I met, and often, but not always, addressed them in the second person.

So, if we are all migrants from somewhere, then migration itself is not a problem. Yet every day we are bombarded with the far-right narrative that asylum seekers and refugees are to blame for the state of the country, for the cost of living, the NHS near collapse, and the housing crisis. Punitive policies from a supposedly socialist government reinforce these lies.

For me to do the right thing is to use the form of poetry, led by the glorious voice of Benjamin Zephaniah, to refute these lies, the do what I know is right and accept responsibility for the consequences and so to speak out a s a free person. The first poem I wrote about refugees is the poem of the month, Lunchtime Stories, which was published in my 2019 pamphlet, Testimony.

My writing life

All the last few months have been devoted to the development of my proposed collection and a couple of weeks ago I completed the initial setting out and structure of the book. The next thing I have to do is proofread and format and then apply for some money to get a professional edit and move on towards publication. It is long and arduous journey, but I feel I am well on the way at last.

Other than that, I have managed to wite a few poems, spurred on by the need to take something to the monthly stanza meeting on the first Thursday of every month, which comes round frighteningly quickly!

My reading life (poetry at the kitchen table)

The book mentioned above on freedom is a big read and has taken me ages to get through, but brimming with inspiration and ideas. Well worth it. The kitchen table has been a bit sporadic lately but we have taken a bit of look at T.S Eliot, (whose poem The Hollow Men sees its centenary this year) and gone on to the collected poems of Seamus Heaney.  Away from the kitchen table I have just finished Karen Solie’s Well Water. This last collection needs time to digest, so maybe I will be able to offer some thoughts on it next time.

Hare in the Headlights.

The much-anticipated Stanza Bonanza organised by the National Poetry Society took place on Thursday 27^th November on Zoom, where I read with two other poets from our group: Carole Coates and David Canning, alongside three poets for the Blackpool and Fylde group and number of open mic contributions. It was a good evening and a real opportunity for me to share some poems on an environmental theme.    

I hope everyone has a good break over Christmas time and see you all next year.

This description of the way the Roman Empire’s expansion left devastation in its wake was quoted by Tacitus in his work Agricola from the  speech of a Caledonian leader rallying  his troops against Rome in what is now the borders of Scotland. It was quoted in an article in the Guardian after Trump’s peace deal in Gaza was announced.

Obviously all of us are preoccupied  with the continuing horrors in Gaza and the threats from Russia against Ukraine, all of us have been feeling helpless in the face of the horror. These wars fill the news headlines day after day. Always alongside them are the lies and half truths, the constant attacks from social media, a discourse of division and hatred, an attack on our concept of reality and democracy, and the unending public discourse about the failure of  politicians.

So in this month’s blog I set out to ponder on what the role of a poet might be in these times. I have been given lately to ranting about it, at the dinner table and when spending time with friends. Reading two poems made me realise that now is the time to to write not rant.

You may recall that after the Prime Minister’s use of the phrase island of strangers, about what our politicians choose to see as the problem of immigration, Michael Rosen wrote a poem celebrating the NHS, using that phrase as its title and describing how people from all over the world had saved his life when he had Covid. In his poem he embraced and celebrated the ‘strangers’ who helped him.

The second source of inspiration came only this week when it was announced that Abeer Amer, a Welsh poet of Iraqi descent, had won the Forward Prize for the single poem, with her poem, At Least. Abeer sets us an example in her beautiful lament for the children trapped in Gaza.

These two wonderful writers have given me a choice. I don’t need to rant, instead I can  write poems of celebration and lament. I can offer my own contribution to a discourse among poets and artists everywhere in the hope of being heard. I invite poets who read this blog to join me. Tell me what you want to celebrate and what you feel you need to lament in response to this blog.

The poem of the month this month is a celebratory poem Clapping, written in 2020.

My writing life

This month has seen a degree of progress towards preparing the my first full collection. After advice from Zoe (Brigley) and Rhian (Edwards) at their course in Ty Newydd in July,  I have sent poems to five magazine for inclusion. I have also spent time with my poems for the collection spread out on the dining room table in order to create the order which will give the best narrative of the work. I am now about to embark on the ‘fingertip’ edit and careful scrutiny. The above has not left a lot of time for the creation of new work, so that’s on the back burner for now. 

My reading life (poetry at the kitchen table)

We have finished the Elizabeth Burns posthumous collection the Lightkeepers and Iris Lewis’ Amber. After a short break to visit friends, we are about to embark on TS Eliot’s Collected Poems (well why not?) starting with The Waste Land  from my copy published in 1974 as a ‘Faber paper covered edition’ purchased for the princely sum of £1.20 and no doubt worth every penny! I will let you know how we get on next time…  

Hare in the Headlights  

Much to tell. Having read at the local King Street studio with members of my Stanza group in September, the next reading was in Kendal on the 14^th of October at an event organised by Joy Howard to raise money for Save the Children in Gaza. I read at an open mic slot and the event raised £250 for the charity.

In November on the 27^th I shall be reading as part of the Lancaster Stanza Group in a Stanza Bonanza with Blackpool and Fylde group. The event will be on Zoom and I will send the link out the day before when we receive it from the National Poetry Society.

And finally I heard yesterday that Mslexia have accepted a poem for their December edition which I submitted to their poetry challenge.      

That’s it for now..

It is the 4^th 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 18^th 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 14^th October, 7.00-8.30 pm, Outside-in Children’s Centre, Beezom Road, Kendal, LA9 6EL)  

That’s it for now   

Many years ago when I was teaching performing arts full time, the poet Jackie Kay did a two day residence at Edge Hill University to mark the opening of the Creative Writing department. She also facilitated a workshop with some drama students.

She arrived with a big carrier bag full of the day’s newspapers and invited the students to walk around and look at the headlines. Then she posed the question: What is really going on?  I have never forgotten this session and the extraordinary discussion and wonderful work it engendered in the young people.

For me part of the purpose of poetry is to raise and respond to this question, to engage with public forums and media to write about politics in a creative way. So here are some of the headlines from today’s UK papers: August 30th 2025:

‘Inn justice’ for Epping
Raynor faces sleaze enquiry
Shooting Terror
One third of Gaza wounded are children
Farage deportation plans
Taylor to wed Travis
Migrant hotels face closure
Noel: I’m so proud of Liam
Minister for hypocrisy
Pill for weight loss on NHS

How should or might a poet respond? 

Could  these be headlines prompts?

What preoccupations do they echo in us as poets?

Over the next few months and into 2026  I will be exploring my process in writing political poetry, writing about the really difficult things that make me angry or the ridiculous things that are also terrifying. If you come and read my blog I invite you to respond with your own ideas and comments.

My Writing Life

has been sporadic to say the least during the last 18 months or so, dogged by endless health issues which I will not share, but it has come back on track inspired by my most recent residential at Ty Newydd with Zoe Brigley and Rhian Edwards. Four days in late July: Editing and Submitting your work with Seren editors, and I came away with a plan or should I say A PLAN!!!!.

I have been looking at past poems and the plan is to move my collection, which has been in progress far too long, towards publication. I have come back with lots of ideas  and  much inspiration. My thanks to both lovely tutors and fellow poets who shared the special experience with me. Zoe and Rhian work are both accomplished poets and excellent poetry teachers. Worth following up: https://zoebrigley.com/ and https://www.rhianedwards.co.uk/.

I learnt a lot about editing  and an alternative way of workshopping, as devised by Felicia Rose Chavez: https://www.feliciarosechavez.com/about.

At the moment I am still writing some poems as well as sending poems to magazines and looking for submission windows with  publishers etc. of which more next time…  

My Reading life

A poem a day at the kitchen table. My wife and I started doing this with a couple of Mary Oliver collections that had been languishing on my  bookshelves for a long time. Currently we are enjoying Eliabeth Burns’ collection Held (Carcenet  2010). Sometimes more than one poem. It makes me read poets I haven’t read for a while.

In prose I have enjoyed  Elif Shafak’s There are Rivers in the Sky. A story of two rivers, the Tigris and the Thames, it tells how a working class, minimally educated young man in 19th century London manages to decode the cuneiform inscribed on clay tablets from ancient Nineveh in the British Museum. However it is also the story of the Yazidi people of Turkey and Iraq, and the oppression they have suffered through the ages, culminating in the genocide committed by ISIS in 2014. At times not a comfortable read (and an ending that is somewhat contrived) but very good quality writing.

Hare in the Headlights

Lots coming up in September apart from  my Stanza group. I am rehearsing some members of the group who are  reading at the Morecambe Poetry Festival (12^th to the 14^th September )Then I am reading at the groups reading  at King Street Studios Lancaster on September 18^th. A  busy month while the plan chunters on in the background.

Till next time and I look forward to receiving your comments soon.

Elizabeth Hare

It’s OK, there wasn’t a blog for January 2025. Or a poem of the month.

Why? Because it was cold and dark and mostly wet here where I live, and I hibernated. However, I did do some Writing Hours with Kim Moore and Clare Shaw and get some poetry done despite needing recovery time from recent political events….

So this is the first blog of the 2025 and I have decided on a new look. A quick Google search about refreshing your blog style suggests writing about your passions. Mine are poetry, politics and gardening, in other words a wide variety of topics for readers to choose from who visit my website. Here goes! 

Poetry first, last and always

Inspirations this month have been an hour with Malika Booker on the Writing Hours about lyric poetry. She took a look at the Ghazal and also at the contemporary interpretation of lyric through the work of poets including Patricia Smith, Anne Cameron, Danez Smith, Mimi Khalvati and Aga Ali Shahid. All of them worth a Google search. I have started to read Karen Solie’s The Caiplie Caves in anticipation of her new collection due out in April, already ordered. 

Submissions and opportunities It was lovely to be contacted by Joy Howard of Grey Hen Press about her forthcoming anthologies and invited to submit poems. At the moment I am working on my long-neglected collection for a re-think over the next few months.

What’s next? Coming up in February a return  to the film script for my collaboration with Elaine Brown, in the hope that if the weather improves and we can do some outdoor filming soon. Also the Lancaster LitFest is coming up in March and hey, guess what? Malika Booker is reading here in Lancaster. There is also other poetry stuff to go to, so I’m looking forward to it. 

Politics is very much a preoccupation these days as we watch the world being shaken by events and wait anxiously every day to see what the latest nightmare is  visited on us by the rich white men in power.  I have come to think that writing about it might be a way of making sense of it all, it that is possible. This will be my task and a way of dealing with it.

The poem of the month this month celebrates the 2^nd of February Candlemas, Imbolc and Groundhog Day.Gardening. Right now I am plucking up the courage to get to the allotment to sow seeds, but every day I tell myself. ‘it’s too cold today, maybe tomorrow.’  

A week or so ago I listened to a programme on Radio 4 about whether or not humans can hibernate. The scientific conclusion is that no we can’t, but some afternoons in the last month I have been tempted to take to the duvet for a month or two and wake up with the spring. November was wet and grey with an unexpected burst of cold weather and sunshine at the end; just a few days of winter as we imagine we remember it. This time of year is the hardest for me as I find the endless dark a real challenge. I have to keep busy to stave off a desire to hibernate.

However
My writing life continues. The last month saw two workshops to write for and a writing day spent with four women poets at my friend Carole’s house one Saturday. There can be few things more up-cheering than the company of poets on a winter’s day. Plenty of tea and biscuits and plenty of laughs as well as good poetry prompts to write to and poems to discuss. I am planning to hold one in February next year to keep up our spirits. Came way with lots of ideas to develop  into the next few poems.

There has also been the occasional Zoom workshop with the Ty Newydd group, but most of my time has been devoted to completing my pamphlet for a competition due for submission  this week. This Thursday is the December Stanza meeting, the last before Christmas. My intention for the next week or two before the festivities begin, is to work on the script and poems for the film, as I am meeting with the film maker soon.         

My reading life continues and I am still with the poets I was enjoying last month. I have completed the Katrina Naomi collection, Battery Rocks  and it has been both a pleasure and an inspiration. The poems are all about the sea on the surface but they have echoes and resonances for other areas of all our experiences. Thank you Katrina for a lovely collection. I read in your newsletter than it has already gone to reprint, well deserved. I have just embarked on a new nonfiction reading list of which more next time. I am eagerly waiting for my copy of Robin Wall Kemmerer’s The  Serviceberry on order from Waterstone’s.

Hare in the Headlights 

Not much to report this month as the pamphlet has meant that I have kept my head down and edited and edited etc. I am thinking about some magazine submissions for the new year.

Till then  have good festivities!

No such luck, I am afraid. Since I stopped work for the charity in September –

My writing life and has been hectic. Early in October I started my once a fortnight poetry class at a local community centre, the Gregson. We agreed we would keep it to four people at present and we would do five sessions before Christmas and then review. So far I am enjoying a chance to teach again, as teaching poetry is always an opportunity for me to learn and be inspired by my students and the materials we use.

Half way through  October Kim Moore announced she is reviving the writing hour in January which is great and I have signed up for that. It runs  10 to 11 every morning on zoom with Kim and Clare Shaw. It is a great motivator for the new year and gets everyone out of the post-Christmas dark days slump.

The weekend of the 20^th October saw the Lancaster LitFest autumn weekend and was closely follow by Jane Routh and Neil Curry launching their new collections at the Friends Meeting House, hosted by Mike Barlow. It was a real treat to  go to a reading by two such accomplished and experienced poets.

November started with my two poetry group workshops running consecutively on the first Thursday  and Friday. I had managed to write a poem for each of them. Now in November things have calmed down a bit and I am managing to get on with my current projects, of which more later.

My reading life

This last month I have enjoyed Gillian Clarke’s collection The Silence and Katrina Naomi’s Battery Rocks as well regain Polly Atkins’ latest prose collection In the Company of Owls. She read from this last at the LitFest weekend.

Tidying my poetry shelves has thrown up some collections I have not looked at for ages and I am now reading Kim Addonizio’s 2015 collection Wild Nights and enjoying it very much.

Hare in the Headlights

This last month, apart from all the above, I have embarked on a collaboration with a local film maker, Elaine Browm. I will be writing poems and script and Elaine  will be in charge of filming. I am also putting together a pamphlet as a  warm up for when I return to my collection in the new year.

Poem of the month for November is Days from my first pamphlet, Gardening with my Father (2015) the poem captures my feelings at this time of year as the allotment is tidied for the winter and I look back on the many different days I have enjoyed gardening in this last season. 

Finally, I often add the odd political comment here a the end of my blog, but just now, like many people I am in shock as a result of recent events.

Until next month …

Welcome back to old readers and welcome to new ones!

I am back at last after 3 very busy years, which is a reason not an excuse! My news is that two weeks ago I finally left the charity I helped to found and chaired for eight years. It is called RAIS Lancaster, which stands for Refugee Advocacy Information and Support. It was sad to say goodbye to our lovely clients from the flourishing local asylum seeker and refugee community. It has been a privilege to work with them but now it is time to move on. In recognition of how important the work has been for me, the poem of the month for October is is Along the Canal, one of several I wrote over the years of my work with refugees.

So, now I’m back to writing, and writing poetry in particular, and there is lot going on. I am using the same format for my blogs as before as it works well for me.

My Writing Life has not done too well recently but I have now started to write some poetry again and have few things on the go. I have been greatly helped by the my wonderful WhatsApp group based on a residential course at Ty Newydd, the centre for literature Wales which took place two years ago. We were tutored by Carol Ann Duffy and Gillian Clarke. We have kept in touch and recently started to have regular Monday night Zoom poetry sharing. Usually three or four of us share recent work and it is stimulating and helpful. In addition I am returning to my local Stanza group and as often as I can to Brewery Poets in Kendal.

My Reading Life has consisted, as ever, of a number of interesting non-fiction books including Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger and currently Mary Beard’s Emperor of Rome. I am still ploughing through the latter (it is a hefty read but very entertaining).

Recent poetry I have enjoyed includes Gillian Clarke’s The Silence and Kathleen Jamie’s Cairn which is not all poetry but a fascinating collection of various genres of creative writing. I am about to embark on the recent collection from Katrina Naomi: Battery Rocks, which won the Arthur Welton award this year. More of that next time no doubt.

Hare in the Headlights. Here I have two recent exciting developments to report. Mike Barlow whose Wayleave Press, who has published two of my pamphlets, has included two of my poems in the new Wayleave anthology, out few weeks ago, Press Rewind, Play Again.
Secondly, I have recently been asked by a member of the Stanza group to start a series of poetry workshops. I now have four potential members and we meet next week to plan how this will happen.

That’s it for now. Look out for my next blog in about a month.

And getting back is a going to be an expensive nightmare. The countries on the short green list, are largely places too expensive to go to, ever, or that you wouldn’t want to go to, ever.

So, if you could go anywhere where would you go?

Would you, like me, want to go back to somewhere you have already been, somewhere you love? Or somewhere you’ve always wanted to go to and never have.  Thinking about travelling for me has brought on a fit of memories and longing for the roll of the suitcase wheels on the station platform, the sound of other languages around me, the smell and taste of exotic food, the touch of sun on my winter-cold skin.

I have decided on two remedies for this lamentable state of affairs. This month’s poem of the month Papagayo Beach is from my 2019 Wayleave pamphlet, Testimony and you can find it here.

Secondly in the next few days I shall be recording my second U-tube video, If I Could Go Anywhere on which I will be reading a selection of my travel poems.

Please join me on my imagined and remembered travels until we can all go for real.

My Writing Life

The highlight of the last few weeks has been my experience of an Arvon at Home poetry course. I have never been to a real Arvon course, so I was glad to take  the opportunity to go to an online one. It was wonderful to have four workshops, one each morning for four days and two good tutors John Glenday and Mona Arshi, plus tutorials in the afternoons and readings in the evenings. Just like a real writing week!

But not quite. Hours and hours of Zoom made it possible, but were also completely exhausting in the way only screens can be. We were all at home with our lives going on around us and taking a writing retreat was not easy. Having said that I really enjoyed the screen company of the other poets, even if socialising was minimal.

It was certainly worthwhile and online makes Arvon accessible to people in other countries who would otherwise never have been able to come.

I am longing to get back to real writing residentials and I shan’t mind if I never zoom again after restrictions are lifted in June, but it was fun and very interesting and worthwhile.

My Reading life

Very largely influenced by the poetry that we read at the Arvon. There was a recommendation to read collections, so I have just finished a second reading of Elizabeth Burns posthumous collection Light Keepers. Because Elizabeth lived here and was in my writing group and was a mentor and friend,  it was both a sad and a joyful experience. In this reading I revisited many poems I have loved and heard her read and encountered more I had never come across.

In my determination to read poetry I have also been reading the latest in the series of BloodAxe anthologies Staying Human (ed: N. Astley 2020). It is vast tome and I have taken it slowly and methodically. However, I confess to not having read every poem and some sections were, inevitably, more to my taste than others. I particularly enjoyed the poems in the section entitled Harmony and Discord.

Hare in the Headlights

My publication this month in the Grey hen anthology Not Past, But Through (ed J. Howard, 2021) of my poem about my hometown river Lune.

After a break, apart from Arvon, of nearly two months from writing I am returning slowly and getting going again. Always on the horizon is my dream of a collection.

That’s all for now.

 

 

You must be the change you want to see in the world. Mahatma Gandhi

It has been just over a month since the end of the Kendal Poetry Festival. During that time how does a poet react to what is happening out there and all around her?

My Writing life

Poetry is one of the few art forms that can be said to have survived the pandemic reasonably well. Poetry is written and often read alone, and the internet lends itself well to the sharing of workshops, readings and even festivals online. It has been a lifesaver for me to have my regular writing groups on Zoom throughout the last year.

Having said that, the Kendal Poetry Festival was tour de force and included 60 poets and up to 160 participants at some of the readings. All credit is due to the directors for getting such a complex event together so well. It was great to return to reading after reading and see the same faces there. Some of the time it felt as though we really were together sharing the experience. Of course, we missed the live buzz and getting our books signed, but there was the advantage of hearing poets who were reading in other countries and who might not have been able to come in person.  Afterwards I rushed to the festival online bookshop and bought books which I am now taking my time to enjoy. For nine days the festival banished the lockdown blues.

But there was more to it than that. Much was read about the reality we are currently struggling to survive in, about climate change, about politics and the pandemic. It would be easy to dismiss the event as too small to make a difference, but I heard poets who were very clearly being the change they want to see and touching the hearts and minds of those who listen to and read their work.

In the first week of March all daily life, and the writing life, was interrupted by the murder of Sarah Everard, allegedly by a serving police officer, and by the way the demonstrations of grief and solidarity and the protests against violence against women have been addressed by the police and by the media.

I know no woman who can truthfully say that they have never been harassed or treated with disrespect because they are female. So how can we expect to live the change except by protesting, except by meeting without fear, except by walking our streets at night, and that is still hard to do.

My writing life continues reasonably steadily at about a poem a week at present pushed on by the deadline of the next online writing group. I am happily being guided at present by Kate Clanchy’s Grow Your Poem. I recommend it.  Right now, I am taking a break from the group and have signed up for an Arvon at Home at the end of April.

My reading life has been rich and strange this month. I have enjoyed Anne Tyler’s The Redhead at the Side of the Road, only wished it had been longer. Also Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owen, and The Other People by C J Tudor. All good reads, getting me through this seemingly endless lockdown.  And yesterday I finished reading Carolyn Forche’s collection In The Lateness of the World and very soon I am going to read it again. I have now plunged into a truly enormous anthology, more of that next time.

Hare in the Headlights

This month I have had a poem, Lune accepted for a forthcoming Grey Hen anthology and sold 35 copies of my pamphlet Just Above the Waterline. 

I am currently about to make my second YouTube recording of poetry, coming up soon.

That’s all for now.