In July 2024 the England fast bowler James Anderson retired from international cricket, after a career spanning 21 years as a Test cricket player. He holds the record for most Test wickets by a fast bowler. Here is my tribute to him in the form of a Scrabblegram.
Bounded by the urban conglomerations of Amsterdam, Leiden, Rotterdam and Utrecht, the Groene Hart (Green Heart) of the Netherlands is a flat, relatively sparsely populated landscape of fields, woods, canals, lakes and villages. Nature is managed here with care and skill: in spring and summer the verges are bright with wildflowers, and there’s an abundance of birdlife. It’s a beautiful area for walking and cycling, or for trying out some of the numerous water sports on offer.
Continue readingI was fortunate, when studying English Literature at A-Level, to have an inspirational teacher. Lynne Ruscoe was only a few years older than we were, full of energy and enthusiasm, with an engaging smile and a lively sense of humour. We read Chaucer and John Donne, John Keats and Gerald Manley Hopkins, Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy, and – of course – Shakespeare. Hamlet was one of our set texts and I vividly remember the emotional impact the play had on me, especially these lines from Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy:
Continue readingMy mother taught me to swim before I could walk. This was sensible. We had a swimming pool in the garden, unfenced of course, a sun-glittered temptation to a small child crawling over spiky grass on a hot day.
Swimming, tennis, netball, rowing, squash… sport has always been a part of my life. It taught me to play by the rules, absorb the pressures of competition, survive the grim lessons of humiliation and defeat. Through practice and repetition I gradually developed muscle memory, so that movement and coordination became ever more instinctive. I learned to relish the sheer joy of cleaving through water like a dolphin, the exhilaration of a hard-fought squash match, the triumphant exhaustion of pushing my body to its limits.
Continue readingThis poem is inspired by my memories of rowing in a four as a schoolgirl and undergraduate. The ‘ripples’ at the end of each oar are three-line Fibonacci poems by syllable count (1, 1 and 2 syllables) with the additional constraint that the number of letters per line are also successive Fibonacci numbers (3, 5 and 8 letters respectively).
I created this Scrabblegram to mark Pi Day (March 14th). In addition to the normal constraints of a Scrabblegram, I chose the blanks to be p and i, which made it even harder! But fun!
Continue readingBased in southeast England, Black Cat Press was founded in 2022 by Satya Bosman. In the space of a little over two years, the press has established a reputation for publishing exquisitely produced collections by talented emerging writers, with an emphasis on nature and eco-poetry. I had the pleasure of speaking to Satya and her co-editor Catherine Balaq about the joys and challenges of independent poetry publishing, their own poetry, and forthcoming projects.
Continue readingWhen I write poetry, for whom am I writing? Who is my intended audience?
This is a question I have only recently started asking myself. Perhaps it is different for novelists, or storywriters, or memoirists. Perhaps it is different if you seek to earn a living from your writing; but my answer, at least until a few weeks ago, would have been in the first instance I write for myself. I need to translate thoughts, feelings, memories, impressions, imaginings, experiences, observations, into words and structures, driven partly, I think, by a compulsion to generate some sort of order and meaning out of chaos and confusion.
It continues to be a pleasant surprise when others read my poetry and relate to it in some way. My prime motivation for writing, however, is not a desire to be read.
Continue readingIn our corner of southeast England, we were treated last week to a spectacular display of nacreous clouds. I had occasionally observed nacreous clouds during the years I lived in Aberdeen in Scotland, but this was the first time I’ve seen them so far south. Their iridescence provided a glow of joy in what has been a bleak time.
Continue readingThere is something delightfully wacky about the familiar Christmas carol The Twelve Days of Christmas. From its opening gift of a partridge in a pear tree to the concluding twelve drummers drumming, the lyrics have a pleasingly cumulative effect. It’s a fun counting song for children, but there’s also a great deal going on poetically – surprising images, interesting juxtapositions, alliteration, assonance, half-rhyme, structural repetitions, and clever metrical variations.
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