In January 2020, I started a hashtag on Twitter and Instagram called #mypoetrybookshelf. I outlined my aims for this hashtag in a blog post last year but, essentially, I planned to reread a poetry book everyday and share one poem that spoke to me. I had no idea that two months after picking up the…
Category: Reading
My Poetry Bookshelf – March
In January, when I started revisiting collections for #mypoetrybookshelf, I never imagined that my life would utterly change just three months later. In March, one of my students tested positive for Covid-19 and I went into self-isolation for two weeks. My university teaching moved swiftly online, my husband could no longer work and our busy…
My Poetry Bookshelf — February
I was introduced to the work of Jorge Luis Borges back in 2009 when I started my Creative Writing MA at Cardiff University. Richard Gwyn, who later became my PhD supervisor, used Borges’ writing in one of our early seminars. I cannot remember which piece he brought but I remember the sense of cracking open….
My Poetry Bookshelf — January
Last year, I read Mary Ruefle’s book of collected lectures, Madness, Rack and Honey, and have thought often since about this passage on rereading: ‘And there was a curiosity too, the curiosity of revisiting and remeeting. Some gigantic memory might strike me as being rather small in the flesh, or the altogether unremembered might strike me…
Begin as you mean to go on
It’s the third week of 2018 and I am finally starting to feel human again after an extremely busy period and a long-standing chest infection. Despite the occasional cough, I am now getting back to a healthy routine of early nights, early rises, poem writing, editing, reading and more. Soon I’ll be teaching again –…
The Cardiff Review – Poetry Editor
On Friday, I was officially welcomed to The Cardiff Review as their new Poetry Editor! As a result my weekend was spent feeling joy-filled and celebrating with just the right amount of craft cider. Okay, perhaps a little too much… I am honored to join this dedicated team and follow in the footsteps of former editor…
Warmth & Writing at the University of Jyväskylä
During Cardiff University’s reading week in February, I could be found on the University of Jyväskylä’s snowy campus in Finland. Both institutions are members of the European Association of Creative Writing Programmes (EACWP) and formed a link in 2015 with the first teaching exchange between Dr. Shelagh Weeks and Terhi Forssén. I was delighted that my visit…
Semi-Detached
My last post was in May and a lot has happened since then. Summer is my busiest season and as work for my day job, PhD and freelance projects increased my blog posts and personal writing took a reluctant back seat. Luckily, things are cooling down, both literally and figuratively, and I can now take…
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…
Roath Writers Anthology Launch at RARA
Three years is not long in the scheme of things and yet there is something significant about it. When I started Roath Writers three years ago I could not see beyond the first session, could not imagine people coming again and again – the early mornings picking poetry, the late nights at the pub. I…
Christina Thatcher 