New poems

Really excited to have two new poems in POETRY’s October edition. It’s an all-UK poets issue and features some beautiful work taken from Poetry Review (Liz Berry’s poems being particularly great) and new poetry from lots of people I admire  including Kathryn Maris, Sophie Collins, James Brookes, Sam Riviere, Claire Trévien and Hannah Lowe. It’s such a brilliant magazine and great value, so subscribe!

It’s nice to publish poems that feel different to the work in my book – I have this feeling that I need to ‘move on’ somehow…there are a few more coming up in Poetry Review and Poetry Wales.

New anthologies

I’ve contributed two pieces to this amazing project Double Dare Ya: A Riot Grrrl Inspired Super Zine, edited by the amazing artist Julia Scheele. I was super inspired by riot grrrl when I was a teenager and ended up in tears watching ‘The Punk Singer‘ recently. Huggy Bear and Bikini Kill were the first band I went to see at the Newcastle Riverside. My pieces are inspired by Skinned Teen’s fanzine Drop Babies and Kathy Acker. There is a brilliant crowd-funding deal to be had for the zine and associated artwork here.

I’m also just finalising the introduction to Best Friends Forever, the anthology of poems on female friendship that’s coming out from The Emma Press in December. Contributors to the book include Rebecca Perry, Annie Freud, Karen McCarthy-Woolf, Martha Sprackland, Camellia Stafford and Brenda Shaughnessy. I’ll be getting the proofs for the book any day now, and I’m feeling very excited about seeing it in book form for the first time.

Readings

Next weekend (Saturday 11 October) I’m doing a super short reading as part of the London Lit Crawl, which is being held in Peckham for the first time and then on Sunday 12 October, heading to the Lichfield Festival for an Emma Press reading on love and friendship with Liz Berry, Jacqueline Saphra and Francine Elena. There will be scones and tea! You can book here.

On Thursday 16 October I’m reading a few poems alongside Alex MacDonald, Crispin Best and Joey Connolly at the Archway with Words festival/Video Strolls screening. It’s at The Hideaway 7-9pm and it’s free!

On Saturday 8 November, I’m reading at the Reading Poetry Festival with Ian Duhig and Kate Clanchy, then co-hosting with Emma Wright, a pre-launch preview of Best Friends Forever with Fran Lock, Kathryn Maris, Rebecca Perry and Camellia Stafford.

Poems in Which

Poems in Which 6 will go live very soon. It has brilliant new poems from Joey Connolly, Holly Isemonger, Jon Stone, Becky Varley-Winter, Amy Blakemore and, err, many more. Nia and I are cock-a-hoop that Wayne Holloway-Smith, Alex MacDonald and Rebecca Perry are joining us as co-editors from Issue 7 onwards, so we should be able to get through our submissions somewhat quicker than we can manage at the moment and hopefully publish at least 4 issues a year.

Bitlets

I’m writing a piece on Rosemary Tonks’s collected poems, just out from Bloodaxe. I have been reading it with a kind of terrible excitement and anxiety. I’m pretty enchanted & slightly intimidated by the requirement to get my response down on paper.

Finally, I’ve taken on a trustee role at fabulous The Poetry School. I’m so happy they want to have me.