Lemonade Anemone

I’ve been writing poetry for about twenty years now, and I mostly write narrative poems. So, when I started going up to the Edinburgh Fringe in the late 2010s, I got really into the idea of producing long-form live literature shows.  The first show I wrote was called Skip, Skip, Skip , and it was an autobiographical, one-hour piece that I performed at the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe. It was a nostalgic and heartfelt show about music, friendships, and accidentally becoming a teenage goth in rural Norfolk in 2002.  I really loved the process of writing the show. I liked telling a cohesive story in a long-form, theatrical context – something I’d never done before – and I loved making something that really seemed to resonate with people. But I found the performance side of the process really challenging, especially having to learn an hour’s worth of words. My brain just doesn’t work like that, and the nerves really got to me.  Next time I write something like that, I thought to mys...

This year, I joined a writing collective called HOMEWORK. We meet once a month to decide on a writing prompt and share the poems we've put together over the previous thirty days.  It's been a game-changer for me, a real kick-up-the-arse for my poetry, and a way to give me the impetus to write something every month that I wouldn't normally write.  Last month, our prompt was oxymorons  so I decided to write about the bravery needed to admit your own cowardice.  The poem came out a bit dark, but maybe that’s the point…   Chicken Heart  This is the year of cowardice. Toad-belly pale and stagnant.  And I am yellow lichen, shade-quenched  and touch-starved. Soft as unexamined  unease. Better left unmentioned. Outside, my mother is dead-heading daisies,  bearing each wilting yellow flower in gentle, careful fingers. Chicken feather petals  falling at her feet.  I read somewhere that you can  hypnotise chickens with ...

I read this article last year, all about how you can trick yourself into sending out more poetry submissions by aiming for 100 rejections a year.  One hundred is a big number. It means really committing to sending your work out into the world, and expecting - nay, revelling! - in the knock-backs.  The #100RejectionsIn2024 project is a way of gamifying the amount of rejection you face as writer, and turning it into something a bit more fun. Plus, it really helps you to get out of your own way. If a poem is rejected at one press, just mark a talley on your 100 Rejections spreadsheet, and send that poem straight back out to somewhere new!  The more poems you send, the more likely you are to be published.  And it's definitely working for me; I've had more published in the past four months than I had in the last two years!  And, in early April, I was delighted to have three new poems in the “ Not Ghosts, But Spirits Volume IV ” anthology by Querencia Press .  Q...

I’ve picked a silly one to start off the New Year! I recently revised this poem, in the hopes of performing it at SMUT in Nottingham. SMUT is a really cool poetry open mic that focuses on themes of love, sex and relationships. I wanted to read this poem out at their September 2023 event, but I didn’t manage to make it along in the end. So, you’re getting first dibs! Crumbs about two women and the obsession with biscuits that comes between them. Give it a cheeky read, and let me know what you think!  Crumbs  Some women live for football and some women love their wine, some women seem quite normal when you chat them up online.  But this girl wasn’t into kinky sex, or sport, or fashions. No, slightly more prosaic were her own obsessive passions.   The sight of diamonds didn't leave her blinded, like a rabbit; this girl had one fixation – an enormous biscuit habit! Our first date was a little odd – she called me up from Aldi to tell me she was stocking up on Nice and Gar...

Look, it just isn’t working. After all, I am  a woman and you? You are a huge sphere  of rock, tracing an elliptical orbit through space.  We’re from different worlds. You circumvent the  earth at two-thousand, two hundred and eighty-eight  miles per hour, and I just can’t keep up  with you. You’ve been so distant lately, but  two-hundred and fifty thousand miles is distance  enough for anyone. And I know you are wonderful.  The nights we spent together were glorious. But when  I don’t see you for weeks of cloudy skies  I start to feel jealous of the stars. Let me start again: I love the way you borrow the light of others  and reflect it back to them. You are so generous,  but we both know this isn’t going to pan out. Maybe  I just need some space. You can be so cold,  unforgiving, until I’m left wondering if there’s  life out there at all. Sometimes you overshadow  me until I feel eclipsed. And I’ll ad...

I've had a pretty serious problem with anxiety for as long as I remember. Sometimes, when the panic flames up, it feels like I'm going to burst into flames. This poem came out of that feeling. Spontaneous Human Combustion   a human body catching fire without an apparent external source of ignition When my first fire flared crimson,   doctors diagnosed delirium: a phantom flame that burned harshly but did not mark me, not externally.  Dismissed as yet another  hysterical teenage girl, hungry  for attention. My chaos made them nervous like I was doing it on purpose.  So, they stuck the ashes back together  with shame and Sellotape, thinking they could squeeze the fire out of me. And I learnt to burn silently.  Stomach somersaulting, head clouded  with the shock of smoke,  I stepped on hot coals so often,  I stopped smelling the burnt flesh.  It happens when I least expect…  the crisp crack of splitting skin. Spitting sp...

I’ve recently been going through loads of my old notebooks and editing older pieces of writing. This piece was originally written during a workshop with fabulous poet Laurie Bolger, and was inspired by a wonderful poem by American poet Thomas Lux .  My poem is all about vacuum cleaners, immortality, and biscuit crumbs. Let me know what you think!  Vacuum Cleaner, 2123 after Thomas Lux  More kleptocrat than civil servant,  she devoured tangled hair cobwebs,  choked down our discarded essence,  tarnished pennies rattling in her cavernous belly.  If some archaeologist – one hundred years from now –  dug through those Dyson dust bags,  they’d know more about us than any  supermarket loyalty scheme. GDPR be damned.  This is one time capsule  Blue Peter wouldn’t dare bury.  All broken biscuits & squashed spiders swallowed by the  swirling suction that never failed to scare the cat.  If I ever die – which I won’t – ...