After my father died, my childhood memories came flooding forward with a force I wasn’t expecting. I remembered his swooped back hair, his over washed jeans, his too loud laugh. I remembered watching the same films with him over and over again, lazing on the couch during hot summer days, threading worms onto our fishing lines. At his…
Category: Mental Health
Dignity
Not many of us think about our dignity on a daily basis. In fact, I’m not sure I’d truly considered what mine meant before being invited to develop two creative writing sessions on the topic for a project run by Making Minds and Interlink. Before planning these workshops, which were aimed at people dealing with…
Loss and Poetry
Since my father’s death in 2013, I’ve learned a lot about grief and writing. I’ve spent late nights reading poetry books and memoirs and early mornings combing over blogs, essays, and academic journals. I have led Death Writing workshops, given a grief talk at Ignite Cardiff, and even changed my PhD topic to better understand…
Memory
Last month I led my first Death Writing session of 2015. Participants of different backgrounds, ages and experiences came together to discuss their relationship with memory, write about significant objects and places, and compose poems for people they’d lost. One of the attendees, the lovely Jodie Kay Ashdown, has kindly posted the piece she wrote…
Cam wrth Gam – Step by Step
I have always believed that people should follow their passions – find the thing they love and do it with as much energy and dedication they can muster. This belief often makes me a difficult party guest. I ignore the small talk and ask questions instead, try to uncover what the person uncomfortably holding their…
ATTIC documentary: A Matter of Perspective
Originally posted on ATTIC:
Last year I was lucky enough to facilitate MARGIN, a writer’s group which responded to exhibitions at ATTIC, a contemporary gallery concerned with scientific, personal and cultural understandings of the mind. This documentary beautifully illustrates ATTIC’s work and ethos. I feel honored and incredibly grateful to have been a part of it. You can read…
(mikst)
Last year I was lucky enough to facilitate a writer’s group called MARGIN which aimed to respond to the Rapid Cycling project at ATTIC, a contemporary gallery concerned with scientific, personal and cultural understandings of the mind. Over the course of six months our group examined work from different artists, discussed the relationship between creativity…
Death Writing
My father passed away in July of this year. It was a strange experience to have someone tell me this over the phone from thousands of miles away. After I hung up I sat quietly for a while before writing “All that’s left of him is stories now” in the last page of my notebook….
Relaxation and Reflection
Over the past few months I have been thinking a lot about what it means to relax. I have a demanding full-time job, run countless freelance projects, and juggle personal responsibilities both in Wales and abroad. Although I love my life, there are always times when things begin to unravel and when this happens, I…
MARGIN
If you’re like most people, you have probably never thought much about the word ‘margin’. It hardly comes up in everyday conversation and dictionaries simply define it as ‘the edge of a page’ or, more broadly, ‘the edge of something’. Over the past six months I have considered this word often and in ways I…
Christina Thatcher 