It is wonderful to welcome Ruth Jenkins onto my blog, talented spoken word poet and textiles artist. I first met Ruth a couple of years ago through activism circles. She is now part of my writing group and is rarely to be found without some yarn or a spindle. Listening to Ruth delivering her spoken […]
IN DEFENCE OF LIFE AND LOVE. A CONTEMPLATION WRITTEN IN HAIKU Morning I leave and wildflower meadow grounds me: cornflower, sainfoin. This is why I go. I will march for this beauty; this wildness roots me. The London-bound train, my curly-headed daughter writes in her journal. She challenged me and it’s because of her I’m […]
It is such an honour to have on the blog today talented poet Caroline Mellor. I became aware of her work through her facebook posts and I must confess, this is a first for me – to buy a book as a direct result of being drawn in by social media posts (maybe other people […]
I finished writing The River Days of Rosie Crow a pretty long time ago now. Before that gem of a Christmas present knocked at my door of agent representation back in December, I was spending my time – A LOT of time – sending that novel off to agents and publishers and sometimes hearing back, […]
‘There is something freeing about being in a world you have complete control over.’ It’s wonderful to have on the blog today seventeen year old Mandisa Mathew. We knew Mandisa’s family when we lived in Nairobi; Mandisa was a friend of my daughter’s and I remember being amazed to discover when she was nine years […]
My sixteen year old daughter has challenged me in the past months, asking me why we talk about our concerns around climate change, but never get involved in activism. We talk about it, feel angry, afraid and a whole range of other emotions, but it stops there. António Guterres, UN Secretary General, stated at last […]
Shirley Read-Jahn is an old friend or, more accurately, an old friend of my mother’s who I’ve also come to know and love over the years. If you’ve read my third novel The Secret Life of Alfred Nightingale, you’ll remember that my protagonist Jim hitchhikes to Matala in Crete where he spends some time living […]
This is a photo of me back in 2005, when I was twenty-seven years old. I had finished writing my first book, The Poet’s Wife (which I called In the Shade of the Orange Tree – this was later changed by the publisher) and my then-boyfriend-now-husband, Andy, was taking a photo of me posting my […]
In no particular oder, here are my top five reads from this past year, books that have stayed with me and I know will do for some time. I have three fiction here, one non-fiction and a travelogue. I’m not normally into anything vaguely dystopian, but this one reeled me in and had me hooked […]
Over the summer, a wonderful poet called Linda France did a call out entitled ‘Yours Sincerely: The Climate Letters.’ This was an invitation to use our pens and imaginations and continue the powerful work that words can bring to the ongoing ecological crisis. People were encouraged to write a letter – to anyone they like […]