In my previous blog, I penned a few thoughts around the curbing of my incessant travel habit. As I was writing it, I considered a poetry competition I entered last year with Trip Fiction (a brilliant online resource pairing books with travel). The remit was to write a poem with a strong sense of place, […]
✰ Caveat – Before anyone reads a word of this, the following blog is not intended to make anybody feel guilty. Guilt is such a counter-productive, ungenerous emotion. It leaves no space for change, for reflection, for openness. Everybody has their own realities and family / personal /professional circumstances that they are trying to balance […]
Published by Nine Arches Press and edited by Jo Bell and guest poets, this wonderful book is a year of poetry-writing prompts. I can’t quite remember when it first came on to my radar – possibly through a podcast. But I am now up to week 40 of 52 and could not be more delighted […]
Towards the end of 2020, I decided to spend the following year reading outside my ethnic group. If you’d like to see my original blog post and the intention I set, click here. The vast majority of books published globally are written by authors of my ethnicity and this is obviously not due to a […]
It was only a couple of years ago that I first heard about Iceland’s Christmas tradition of Jólabókaflóð, roughly translated to ‘Christmas Book Flood.’ On Christmas Eve each year, Icelanders cosy up in front of the fire, drink hot chocolate and exchange books as gifts before spending the evening quietly together reading. For a bibliophile like […]
I recently read a book by Aja Barber called Consumed which caused me to take a long, hard look at the clothes I wear, their provenance, and how the clothing industry is helping to fuel the climate crisis. I’ve really never been into fashion and have always been good at picking out great items from […]
Looking back at my reads from April – June, it appears I read a whole lot more then than the July – September months. I’m not entirely sure why; I would have thought I’d had more time for reading over the summer holidays. Perhaps it was because I was outside far more during these past […]
As I mentioned recently, I won first prize in Trip Fiction’s Voyages by Verse poetry competition. I decided to record myself reading it, so have a listen below.
I’m delighted to welcome on to my blog today Dr Christopher Hopkins, my step-great-uncle (less complicated than it sounds!). He may be turning 94 this year, but Christopher is probably the most energetic person to feature on my blog: he is an author, still plays tennis, swims and dances and answered some of these questions […]
I am over the moon to have won first place in Trip Fiction’s Voyages by Verse poetry competition. It is only more recently that I have been spending more time with poetry – both reading and writing it – and I feel really honoured to win this prize, especially as the three judges were people […]