Sketches

My pamphlet, The Undoing, has a section of short poems I called ‘sketches’. These poemlets stem from comments and observations, little notes of moments, perplexities – somethings and nothings that got themselves caught on my mental cobwebs. I posted one earlier – The Cup – which came from a childhood impression. This one was provoked […]

Deconstructing Undoing

The purpose of this small ramble is me trying to work out what to say about my new poetry pamphlet, The Undoing. The poems within have been selected from over a decade’s work, presented alongside new ones. The idea of ‘undoing’ as the basis for a little collection has been on a slow simmer for […]

If It Was Quiet

My muse at the moment is a masonry drill, interlaced with the robust soundtrack from the bathroom fitter’s radio and power tools. My house is festooned with dustsheets and off-shelf books piled high. Plumber’s materials and boxes of new sanitaryware promise the bathroom of my dreams. If I dreamed of bathrooms, which I do not. […]

A Sense of Homing

Sometimes, when I am very tired, perhaps returning late, I imagine myself going home to a place where I lived many years before. I know the way the key turns in the lock, the familiar smell of the hallway, where the light switches are, and know, without counting, how many steps it will take me to reach […]

Future Past

I turned on my laptop a couple of days ago and got an opening message: ‘preparing your desktop’. Unless I had a new machine, or was using it for the first time, this was not good news. My ‘new’ desktop had none of my settings, none of my files. It had recognised my name, and […]

Good coffee, bad coffee

This is not the first mention of coffee in my blog. There seems to me a natural connection between writing and coffee. Coffee and coffee houses originated in the Ottoman Empire, with the first coffee house appearing in the 16th century in Istanbul. Coffee and coffee house culture migrated through Europe during the 17th century and cafés of diverse kinds are now firmly established […]

Women’s Tea

If anyone asks about recurring themes in my writing, I put tea at the top of the list. Tea seems to spill into my writing as a motif or metaphor. It could be a lonely and exhausted tea bag, a biscuitty slurry, slimy chamomile or in this case an exotic blend that only women may […]

Dead languages, useless knowledge and rocks from outer space

This little ramble is inspired by a memory: my mother once said that she couldn’t understand why Latin – a ‘dead language’- was taught in schools, and why anyone would want to learn anything so useless. Latin is embedded in English grammar along with other linguistic influences, and is our ancient language of prayer and […]

Reading the 21st Century

Born in the mid 20th century, in a not very bookish household, my earliest  literary influences were Enid Blyton and comics. Especially comics, which I could buy for myself at pocket money prices from the corner shop, long  before I was old enough to take myself off to a library. The comic format seems an obvious […]

Fiction Within

Why is creative writing such hard work? Part of the reason is that writers deal in emotions and it is intense. Fiction is ‘real’ when the emotions are evoked. It is not just about story and plot – that is more like a game of logic, which in itself is challenging. Emotions – even fictional […]