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.

The title is in the spirit of the recent landing of Perseverance on Mars, and also because the first part of this blog is about the launch of my latest Wayleave pamphlet Just Above the Water Line on 29^th January 2021 online.

I sat on the sofa in my living room and read my poetry to 50 people. It felt very strange. There are many reasons why I would have liked to have had a real launch with refreshments and wine and friends gathered, but it was nevertheless, a lovely occasion. It felt very odd at the end when I just switched everyone off rather than staying on for a chat and a drink.

Anyway, thanks to Mike Barlow for publishing me (again), to Graham Lowe for his beautiful cover illustration and to my partner Pat for inspiration, punctuation and patience with my, mercifully temporary, persona of ‘temperamental artist’.

Thanks also to my guest readers Carole Coates who read from her forthcoming collection and Pauline Yarwood who read from her Wayleave pamphlet and other poems.

Here are details of what they read.

Pauline read:

Open Skies and Depth of Field, both of which will be in her new pamphlet, Loop which will be published by Wayleave in April.

Things change (published earlier this year in The Unpredicted Spring – Lockdown Poetry 2020, edited by Kathleen Jones and published by The Book Mill Press as part of the Norman Nicholson Poetry Competition.)

and a new poem, Sweet Sixteen. 

Carole read:

Falling in Love with the AA Man (and how he taught me to love my car)
History to the Defeated may say Alas
All Greece Hates
Coming Back Unexpectedly You Look through the Window at your own Room.
All these poems will appear in her next collection When the Swimming Pool
Fell in the Sea, to be published in May this year by Shoestring Press.

Finally, thanks to everyone who came and the lovely feedback I have had from so many of you. 

Back to my usual blog format

My Writing life

Been busy for the last month. I have been more or less keeping up my daily pages, not every day but at least every few days, and I am not going to beat myself up about it! I have written six poems since the beginning of 2021 and am keeping up with both my writing group and Brewery Poets online. I have just submitted four poems to a magazine and am starting to write and collect for my (one day, hoped for) collection! One thing about lockdown: you can’t say you are never at home to write …

Currently attending the Kendal Poetry Festival online as well, all nine days of it. I will do a retrospective blog about it next month.

My Reading life

Some wonderful books recently, and reading is definitely a major part of coping with the present circumstances.

I have enjoyed.

Redhead at the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler

We Begin at the End by Chris Whittaker

And am currently reading Delia Owen’s Where the Crawdads Sing.

One of the few upsides of lockdown is plenty of time to read as well as write.

Hare in the Headlights

Coming up, I plan two U tube recordings soon.

The first will include a couple of poems from the pamphlet but will mostly be travel poems and called If I could go anywhere, simply because at present we can’t go anywhere. The second is still at then thinking stage.

Then there is the magazine submission and a poem submitted to a forthcoming anthology that I have not heard about yet.

So, several things cooking just now.

Till soon

If you would like to buy a copy of my pamphlet, please go to the publications page and scroll down to the order form. The pamphlet costs £5 and there is no additional charge for postage.

 

This first blog of 2021 gives me an opportunity to announce the launch of my second pamphlet for Wayleave Press: Just Above the Waterline, to be published next week. There will be a launch via Zoom on Friday January 29^th, 2021 from 7 to 8 pm, with guest poets Carole Coates and Pauline Yarwood.

As a poet I have learned never to underestimate the power of words and the effect they have on other people and I have come to understand that it is my solemn duty to use words wisely to tell the truth. Recent events in the US have indicated all too clearly the power of lies and disinformation and how they can become the assumed truth with dangerous consequences.

I have no idea how to begin to talk to people who are caught up in believing these lies and conspiracy theories, whether they are about politics or the pandemic. All I can do to try always to be truthful in my writing, to speak with as authentic a voice as I can and rely on the power of truth itself to reach my listeners and readers.

The first group of poems in the new pamphlet is based on my voluntary work with asylum seekers and refugees. Some of the truths I tell in these poems may be shocking, but I want to reveal what is really going on for the people I am privileged to work with, and sometimes reality does not make for comfortable listening. The story told in each of these poems is true.

Inevitably, given our current reality, the pamphlet includes poems about the pandemic and my experience of it, living as I do in a small northern city, part of what the media likes to describe as ‘elsewhere in the UK’. In these poems I have tried to be faithful to reality as it unfolds for me, and this section includes a poem about spending a night in hospital in August 2020 (thankfully not with Covid-19 but a mercifully less serious broken thumb!), and having the opportunity to bear witness to the extraordinary work of the NHS.

We live in a strange and damaged world, an uneasy reality, and I am sure that, more than anything else, we need to reach out to each other with truth and kindness.

Yesterday the number of people vaccinated exceeded the number of people infected in the UK, just. I write as we all are right now, just above the waterline.

To order a copy of Just Above the Waterline please visit my publications page and download the order form at the bottom of the page. Please contact me if you would like an invitation to the launch.

June 20th 2020

With the weather gone wild, wet and windy,  here in the North of England at least, and the world still in fearful lock down, this is not the usual celebratory relaxed time that we get for summer Solstice; long quiet evenings in the garden and trips to see the sun set over Morecambe Bay.

However My Writing Life remains eventful, nonetheless.

Last week Mike Barlow of Wayleave Press showcased my 2019 Pamphlet Testimony in his Editor’s Blog. He highlights two of the poems about homelessness.  In these times of  impending  economic disaster, they are, as he says, a timely reminder of some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

Here’s the link https://www.wayleavepress.co.uk/?cat=3

Last Thursday week, June the 11^th I attended a Zoom poetry launch for Katrina Naomi’s new collection, Wild Persistence. It was lovely to see her and hear her read and I realised how much I miss poetry readings. More of the collection later, but it was astonishing to see 117 people on a zoom, 5 pages!   You would never get that number for a poetry reading. I could not have gone for real as she lives in Penzance and it would have been too expensive. So maybe zoom poetry readings will continue, who knows? It was great to see a couple of familiar faces in the crowd, from Katrina’s poetry course at Ty Newdd last year.

My poetry writing continues steadily, disciplined by the weekly zoom with the writing group, which is very sustaining.  The work is perhaps still a bit obsessive about the pandemic and other current politic events.  At present we are five in the group, three writing poetry and two writing memoirs, and we meet on Wednesdays at 4 p.m. for about an hour and a half, which includes a good chat and catch up at the beginning. This means that from Sunday onward my mind is starting to battle with a new idea, or indeed to find one, and get something together to send round for others to read before the group.

Next week I am starting to send poems out to magazines, something I have not done for ages and using Jo Bell’s model to do this. My next blog of weeks’ time in a couple will be about how I get on. ( Bell’s book How to be a Poet, referenced in the previous blog)

My Reading Life

I have had two new collections to read, Katrina’s collection Wild Persistence published by Seren a couple of weeks ago and Jennifer Copley’s What Happens to Girls, published by Pindrop. I have given each collection a quick read to get the feel and I will comment on them in detail next time when I have had a chance to look at them again. Otherwise the usual enjoyable fiction and a start made on AC Grayling’s Democracy in Crisis; not exactly cheering, but informative.

Hare in the Headlights

A big one this week; my first poetry reading on U tube; I read four poems from testimony and was more nervous than I remember being for long time! Not since my performing days long, long ago.

Here’s the Link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhA54Cyee6k

I have already had 52 watches at the time of writing, very exciting! Enjoy them and watch out for the next one in July.

Till soon.