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Norwich Writers Rebel and #WordsInTheWild

Inspired by the publication of my poem 'Colourless' with Writers Rebel back in July, along with a friend here in Norwich, we decided to set a local offshoot of Writers Rebel, a collective of writers and poets who could gather together in person…
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Publication of new book: The Sky Within - A Memoir of Sleep

My fourth book (and first non-fiction offering), winner of the Backlash Press prize for non-fiction, has been published! It's not very easy to describe how it makes me feel to finally see this book in print. I've been working on it physically…

Colourless

Last week I had a poem entitled Colourless published by Writers Rebel, a collective of writers under the Extinction Rebellion umbrella who believe in a duty to tell the truth about the climate emergency through the power of words and aim to…

Beneath the Same Sun

I've written a fair few poems over the years, but I've never read one in public before. The thought of these things is often scarier than the reality, and I decided to submit a poem I wrote specially for Refugee Week following a call out for…
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Publication Triumph in Mslexia Magazine

This may not sound very exciting, to have a short 300-word piece of creative non-fiction published in a magazine. But for me, it is a real triumph. Let me explain. I have been subscribing to Mslexia Magazine for about eighteen years, a fantastic…
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Taking a 'Tech Shabbat' each Sunday

For a few months now, my family and I have been putting our screens away from Saturday to Sunday evening. Everything goes into a locked box (yes, laptops, phones, i-pads, all of it) and I place the key in a hidden place in case it feels too…
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How to Grow a Library

A couple of years after moving with my family to Nairobi (where we lived between 2013 and 2017), I started thinking about the fact that the school my children attended didn't have a library and I felt unhappy about this. A reading culture in…
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The Stories We Tell Ourselves

I realise that I'm pretty good at telling myself - and other people - carefully crafted stories that have endured over a long period of time; stories that I've never thought to question. In my non-fiction book coming out later this year…

Full circle from Poetry ➛ Stories ➛ Poetry

When my children were really little, I used to read poems to them in the bath. I had a stack of poetry books down by the side of the tub and I found that while they were splashing around, it was a good opportunity to grab a book and read two…

Once a Little Bird Told Me

I have been teaching creative writing to a child called Carina, aged 7, for about a year and a half now. Even writing that sentence gives me pause for thought, because can creative writing actually be taught? Well, I prefer to think of it as…