Lemonade Anemone

I'm so lucky that I get to work with children and young people as part of my day job. I teach creative writing, which is the best subject, and I won't hear a word said against it!  And I'm good at it, too.  But, I'm often reluctant to do anything too tricky or "formal" with my young writers, because  A. I want them to really enjoy the sessions, and  B. the contemporary poetry scene is not that enthusiastic about formal poetry structures.  That being said, I've been working with a particular group of teenagers for a while now, through my freelance contract with Writing East Midlands and, a few months' ago, we got to talking about constrained writing techniques.  They seemed keen, so I thought I'd set them a challenge!  So, I brought in an Abecedarian poem called Hummingbird Abecedarian by Aimee Nezhukumatathil .  An Abecedarian is a type of poem where each line starts with a different letter of the alphabet: the first line starts with the letter ...

I’m part of a group of called DIY Poets , and since 2016, the women of DIY have been hosting an annual event celebrating International Women’s Day .  This year Women Say Stuff hosted its tenth open mic, and it was a really gorgeous evening, where we had the pleasure of uplifting the voices of local women and raising money for Nottingham-based domestic abuse charity JUNO Women’s Aid .  We sold over 100 tickets to the event, secured local sponsorship to pay our staff and performers, and raised over £600 for our chosen charity! Plus, our lovely audience also donated three bags of period products for women in need, which we donated to Nottingham Women’s Centre .  On the night we had twenty-three women on the open mic, plus two fantastic headline sets from Derby-based poet Aoife O’Connor, and WSS co-founder Clare Stewart! (I especially loved Aoife’s award-winning poem “ A Series of Unrelated Small Things .”) On the open mic, we had a real range of topics from maths and to medu...

 In 2022, the folks at Inspire Culture, Learning and Libraries asked Paper Crane Poets to write a commissioned poem for their annual general meeting. We spent two months working together on the poem, which includes contributions from nineteen poets from the collective.  The poem was inspired by our individual experiences in local libraries, and all the brilliant projects that Inspire provides to our communities too. This finished piece includes contributions from nineteen poets from the Paper Cranes Collective: Sue Allen; Sonia Burns; Edwina Crowder; Sarah Dale; Laura Grevel; Rose Harvey; David Hunter; William Kummer; Phil Langran; Katey Logan; Andrea Lucy-Hirst; Sue McFarlane; Tara Singh; Leanne Moden; Jade Moore; Rachel Jackson; Gail Webb; and Dave Woods, with additional editing support from Ann Parker. It was a joy to work on this project, and we’re really proud of the finished piece! Beyond the library door In the beginning, there was the word, and the word was  Shhh...