The turning of the year and the current lockdown has gotten me thinking closely about home. While I am grateful for my home here in Wales, I realize that it is going to be a long time before I am able to visit my friends and family back in America. It has already been over…
Category: Process
A Poet’s Return to Finland
Today I held the initial meeting for the lucky Cardiff Metropolitan University students who will accompany me to Finland for a Creative Writing Summer School in June this year. In anticipation of hosting my first international writing school, I thought I’d share a piece I wrote for Cardiff Met’s staff news page, Insite, about this…
Proofs, Previews, Pre-Orders
I submitted my PhD on February 4th and since then I have been spending my time catching up on sleep and ‘decompressing’. This deserves a whole blog post of its own which I hope to write after my Viva in May. For now, I am enjoying having space in my brain again and time to…
A Writer’s Decade
Recently, I bought a dozen doughnuts from the baker and was given 13 instead of 12. A baker’s dozen. Apparently, bakers in the Middle Ages were afraid of being beaten for ‘cheating’ their customers out of bread. Strict punishments would be handed down to any bakers who were found skimping. So, to avoid these penalties,…
Why do we read, and write, taboos?
This May, I’ll be teaching my first course at The Poetry School on taboos. I am beyond excited! This blog post, which explores my ideas and motivations for running this course, was originally published on their website. You can read it here or check it out there. Thank you! A few years ago I read…
GUEST POST: The point of the first question
During my teaching exchange in Finland, I met so many bright, passionate and talented people. But there were two women in particular whose stories and creativity really spoke to me. I have asked both of them to write guest posts for my blog about themselves, their fathers, their writing and more. Please enjoy the first…
Being Grateful
This time last year I asked my Roath Writers group to make a list of things they were grateful for. Not generic things but specific people, experiences, qualities, places, and anything else that mattered to them. My initial list included both my ankles and my energy. Since then, I have continued thinking about the importance…
Interview with Clare Potter
Originally posted on Welsh Writers’ Trust:
Clare Potter is a poet, playwright, collaborator and educator, originally harking from Blackwood, South Wales. She taught and lived for several years in New Orleans, where she was a consultant for the New Orleans Writing Project. Her collection, ‘spilling histories’ (Cinnamon, 2006), is based around the Hurricane Katrina disaster.…
The Writing Process Blog Tour
Meeting other writers, listening to their work, and hearing about their process is one of my favorite things. After all, we have a lot to learn from each other. For this reason I was delighted to be asked by the wonderful Will Ford to take part in this ‘Writing Process Blog Tour’. Although I have…
Christina Thatcher 