Last year Arlen House published a mighty anthology called Her Other Language with the subtitle ‘Northern Irish Women Writers Address Domestic Violence and Abuse‘. Needless to say, domestic violence and control have been on the rise throughout this pandemic, and in May this year, its editors Ruth Carr and Natasha Cuddington, along with academic and fellow Lapwing poet Lorna Shaughnessy, addressed a conference at the University of Vigo in Spain. With the permission of everyone mentioned in them, you can find their three interventions here.

I am deeply proud to be included in the anthology. Ruth Carr asked me to record a short reading in advance of the Vigo event. The first intervention around the subject of this book was by Lorna Shaughnessy and includes my reading at the end. Other readers appear in the other interventions and I’m so pleased to see not only the poets but Ruth and Natasha having their work honoured in this way.

The Gloucester Poetry Festival is going to be outstanding this year – what a line-up! – and you are welcome to be there, wherever you live as it’s all online.

I’m thrilled to have been invited to join Chaucer Cameron and J.L.M. Morton to read on Monday 25 October at 14.00. You can book here – it’s free but you will need a ticket. There will be an open mic as well as us poets having half an hour each.

Usually I write short poems and half an hour felt a bit daunting at first, but I’ve been productive during our lockdowns. I’m working towards a new collection of poems in all sorts of styles and lengths and am busy gathering together what could work best for Gloucester. My themes will be family and mental health, and the beauties of living close to the sea. A few laughs, a few tears. I look forward to seeing you there.

The Fevers of the Mind anthology ‘Overcome’ is in print and available from US Amazon here. I’m so proud to have my wolves poem included. David L O’Nan works so hard and is excellent at bringing a huge range of poets together. I can’t wait to read the whole selection.

David L O’Nan has been in touch to say that my poem Blood Stains on the Stones has been selected for his forthcoming print anthology for Fevers of the Mind. I had been shy of sending this poem out for some time – it’s rather personal even for me – but Fevers of the Mind welcomed it in May and you can read it here. Now it is to have its place in print as well as online and I’m deeply honoured.

The poem describes PTSD layers as wolves. Thank you to Lebanese-American poet Gibran Khalil Gibran for the title; how can we tell when wolves have visited? By the blood stains on the stones.

Would you like to peer behind the curtain of a writer’s life? David L O’Nan is conducting a series of interviews on his wonderful Fevers of the Mind blog and I’m honoured to show you my interview here. The Fevers blog is home to honest writing in all kinds of forms, saying the unsayable in new, beautiful ways, and is always a fascinating read.

It’s so easy to think we’re just howling at the moon when we write. Many thanks to David for giving so many of us this showcase and for his tireless work for poetry, art and other writing. Thank you very much for interviewing me, David. It’s been a pleasure.

In May I mentioned that American Writers Review has accepted my story Laughing and Grief. The ‘thing of beauty’ mentioned in the post being the unexpected sight of an acceptance first thing in the morning.

This year the Review has a theme for the first time: Turmoil and Recovery. Well, the proofs have been checked, the beautiful cover designed, and the book is now available on Amazon here. I can’t wait to read the other selections. Happy reading!

This October, the Gloucester Poetry Festival is going to run online poetry events every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday throughout the whole month. What a treat! They have thirteen events lined up so far.

On Saturday 23 October between 2 and 4pm, I will be reading alongside Chaucer Cameron and JLM Morton. More news to follow when I have it.

The other day Fevers of the Mind invited me on Twitter to be part of their Wolfpack of writers and overnight they’ve published this! Editor David L O’Lan and the Fevers team work hard at this excellent blog with new postings most days, always moving, varied, wonderful.

This caught my eye the other day – Seven Years As An Author: Ten Things I’ve Learned: ‘You can do a whole lot in seven years. Eat 364 tins of baked beans. Have nine kids. Drink 2,555 pots of nuclear-strength coffee. Watch all of Grey’s Anatomy. Or, you could do what I did and write 18 novels.’

Ladies, gentlemen and everybody else, please welcome Clare Lydon. When she joined my writing sessions years ago in Greenwich Waterstones, she already had a firm idea of what she wanted, a clear, exiting writing style and the business mind and discipline to make it work. Congratulations, Clare, you deserve all your success. I’m thrilled to see you do so well.