This blog post could be called so many things: how time burns, how love burns, how loss burns. I have stepped away from this blog for 18 months to attend to various fires in my own life – some destructive and some restorative. I will be returning, slowly, to say more about these experiences over…
Category: Teaching
Finnish Poetry
I am writing this post from a warm and colourful studio in Central Finland, sipping tea and eating pumpkin seed bread. This week, on behalf of Cardiff University, I am visiting the University of Jyväskylä to observe seminars, give presentations, teach workshops and learn more about creative writing in Finland. It has been extraordinary so far…
People and Place
Today the street I live on in Canton is preparing to host a Big Lunch event. The pavement is being swept, the bunting is going up, and the bouncy castle is on its way! If you don’t know, the Big Lunch is a UK-wide initiative which aims to get millions of people to have lunch…
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….
On the Drover’s Road
Autumn came to Cardiff this week with brisk winds and beautiful colors. The season is changing: scarves are coming out, kettles are boiling longer and more often. It is time to say goodbye to summer. I know I speak for Emma when I say that our summer was quite a meaningful one. We ran our…
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…
View from the Hill
Summer does not tread lightly in Wales. It swoops in unexpectedly and disappears without a trace. Given the limited time we have with this season, Emma and I were delighted to host our third Landscape Writing workshop under the bright and cleansing sun. There is nothing quite like heat in the Welsh hills. Like all…
Past and Present
May is a complicated month – not quite winter, not quite summer, but oh so full of memories. It reminds me of the days when my grandmother still baked birthday cakes in the shape of butterflies, horses, and dinosaurs. It reminds me of the blueberry bush in my back yard and the deep, woodpile splinters…
Dipping into Poetry
I cannot think of a better way to spend a day than by reading poetry, stoking fires, watching rivers, and writing in the company of kind, interesting, and like-minded people. Last Saturday, I got to do just this as Emma Metcalfe and I co-led our Dipping into Poetry workshop. This session is part of a…
Christina Thatcher 