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.

My story Laughing and Grief has been accepted by American Writers Review. In February, while builders were bravely replacing my roof in high winds and snow, I wrote about a sweet gentleman I met in February 2020 when I treated myself to a few days in Paris, just as the world was tilting into the pandemic. It fitted the theme of an event in Greenwich (online) run in March by marvellous Irena Hill of In-Words and she kindly allowed it to elbow in beside the poetry listed for that excellent evening. Many thanks to Irena and to everyone for their wonderful comments about the story. It’s my first fiction in over ten years and I’m excited to see it published at all, let alone somewhere as prestigious as American Writers Review. You can find their back issues here – enjoy!

What better way to look back over this extraordinary year together than with poetry and story. On Thursday 25, my dear friend Irena Hill will host a Zoom event in her In-Words series from Greenwich, London called ONE YEAR ON. To receive the Zoom link, please just email irena@in-words.co.uk

Irena describes her line-up like this – in alphabetical order so I’m leading us off:

Rosie Johnston‘s four poetry books are published by Lapwing Publications in her native Belfast, most recently Six-Count Jive (2019), a description in 17-syllable stanzas of the inner landscape of post-traumatic stress disorder. Last December top Irish poetry blogger Billy Mills chose it as one of his top three Irish poetry books of 2020. Rosie’s poems have appeared or featured in the Mary Evans Picture Library’s Poems and Pictures blog, London Grip, Culture NI, FourxFour, The Honest Ulsterman, Ink, Sweat & Tears and Hedgerow. Anthologies include Live Canon’s ‘154 Project: In Response to Shakespeare’s Sonnets’ (2016), Her Other Language published by Arlen House in 2020 and the Northern Irish section of Places of Poetry (OneWorld, 2020). Before being distracted by poetry, Rosie had two novels published, in London and Dublin. For this event she will read the first fiction she has written in over ten years. You can find her and her books online at www.rosiejohnstonwrites.com

Alex Josephy lives in London and Italy. Her collection Naked Since Faversham was published by Pindrop Press in 2020 (http://www.pindroppress.com). Other work includes White Roads, poems set in Italy(Paekakariki Press, 2018, https://www.paekakarikipress.com), and Other Blackbirds (Cinnamon Press, 2016, https://www.cinnamonpress.com). Her poems have won the McLellan and Battered Moons prizes, and have appeared in magazines and anthologies in the UK and Italy. As part of the Poetry School Mixed Borders scheme, she has been poet-in-residence at Rainham Hall, Essex, and in Markham Square, London.  Find out more on her website: www.alexjosephy.net Her books can be ordered from the publishers, or for signed copies email Alex on alex@alexjosephy.net.

Colin Pink’s poems and fiction have appeared in a wide range of literary magazines and anthologies. His first book of poems, Acrobats of Sound, was published in 2016 (by Poetry Salzburg Press) and The Ventriloquist Dummy’s Lament, a pamphlet of 21 villanelles, with woodcuts by Daniel Goodwin, was published in 2019 ( by Against the Grain Press). He is having two new collections published this year: Wreck of the Jeanne Gougy, a pamphlet also published by Paekakariki with woodcut illustrations by Daniel Goodwin and Typicity, his second full-length collection to be published by Dempsey and Windle in April. You can obtain copies of his books directly from Colin by emailing him on colinpinkconsulting@gmail.com or order them from the publisher’s websites. Visit his Facebook page to see announcements: https://www.facebook.com/colin.pink.37/

Jacqueline Saphra’s The Kitchen of Lovely Contraptions (flipped eye 2011)was shortlisted for the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. If I Lay on my Back I Saw Nothing but Naked Women (The Emma Press 2014) won the Saboteur Award for Best Collaborative Work. All My Mad Mothers (Nine Arches Press 2017)was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot prize. Two of her sonnet sequences A Bargain with the Light: Poems after Lee Miller (2017) and Veritas: Poems After Artemisia (2020) are published by Hercules Editions. Her third collection, Dad, Remember You Are Dead was published by Nine Arches Press in 2019. She will read from her latest book, One Hundred Lockdown Sonnets, published in February 2021 by Nine Arches Press and now available in paperback. She is a founder member of Poets for the Planet, lives in London and teaches at The Poetry School.

Scunthorpe-born Rob Walton lives in Whitley Bay.  His poetry has been published by The Emma Press, Strix, The Interpreter’s House, Sidekick Books, Frances Lincoln, Macmillan and others.  His works of fiction have been published in the UK, Ireland, USA, Canada and New Zealand.  Arachne Press will publish his debut poetry collection, This Poem Here, in March 2021. He collated the New Hartley Memorial Pathway text.  You can follow him on Twitter: @anicelad. 

I hope your appetite has been truly whetted. See you on the 25th, wherever you are.