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,…
How Poetry Burns
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…
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…
Writing a Libretto – My Opera Adventure
One of the things I love about being a freelancer is the collaborations. In addition to running projects with dozens of writers, I have also been fortunate to collaborate with visual and kinetic artists, musicians, teachers, social workers, and even a holistic therapist. Perhaps most significantly though, I have had the chance to work with…
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 –…
Five Years with Roath Writers
September saw the five year anniversary of my writer’s group, Roath Writers. I am still in awe of how the group has grown into its own kind, enthusiastic, thoughtful and creative community. My dream of carving out a small space to talk poems and write with new people has been so far exceeded I wonder if…
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…
To San Jose with Thanks & Poetry
I am sitting in bright sunshine under a blue clock tower in Prague but all I can think about is San Jose: the thick humidity cloaking its streets, the shelves and shelves of poetry written in a language I cannot yet reach, and the school I visited on the outskirts of the city—the Institute of…
Thank You Poetry Lovers!
Three months ago I launched my debut poetry collection, More than you were. Since then, somehow, I have signed and sold 100 copies. I still can’t believe it but I’ve checked my math again and again – it has happened. More have been added to carts on Amazon or sold to bookshops, but I know…
First Stop: Costa Rica
For weeks, I have been asking myself how to write about my book tour. Or, more specifically, the first stop on my book tour: Costa Rica. It has been two months since watching the mountains fade from my tiny-plane-window-view and, still, I am questioning. How can I articulate the magic that happened there? How can…
Christina Thatcher 