One of the silver linings of these grim times is that we can attend events all over the world without being there. Glasgow University’s conference (planned for last April) on public health and private illness – details here – has been revived online and I’m delighted to invite you to join us tomorrow from 7pm at an evening of creative reading.

I’ll be reading from Six-Count Jive (Lapwing Publications, Belfast, April 2019) and will be with:
Georgi Gill
Colette Coen
Sam Rose
Mara Dougall
Moira Dancer
Sara Louise Wheeler
Judy Crow
Caitlin Stobie
Gillian Shirreffs
MT Taylor
Jane Hartshorn and
Laura Donald

It’s going to be an amazing night. Please register here to get the Zoom details. See you there!

Dear fellow writer,

Beloved UK poet and sixties icon Roger McGough has written a letter to his younger self that perfectly sums up a scribble treat: ‘Pick up your pen and let it take you for a walk.’ It’s the essence of our writing adventure and the best way to get your writing going again after a break.

Keep safe and well and do your best to keep writing, Rosie

There are some great stories on this link and I’m deeply proud that one of them is by Churchill Writer, Alice Toby-Brant. Alice’s writing is always worth looking out for. Congratulations, Alice!

My latest review for London Grip is of Charlotte Ansell’s marvellous collection Deluge, published last year by Flipped Eye. You can read it here.

On the Mary Evans Picture Library’s Poems and Pictures blog today – my ‘Mirror’ poem with its gorgeous, accompanying photograph:

The Mary Evans Picture Library is a wonderful archive of images, tucked away in a beautiful Arts and Crafts building in south east London. Every Thursday, the Poems and Pictures blog, curated by Gill Stoker, publishes a poem, old or mint new, accompanied by something from the archive. It’s absolutely gorgeous and an ideal oasis of calm for these uncertain times.

I’ve just had a chat with Jo at the Umbrella cafe and, sad news, we’ve decided that our Word of Mouth events in #Whitstable will go on hold until it’s wise to do this kind of thing again. I’ve let the writers know and we’re all together about the wisdom of this. I hope very much that when the time is right, we’ll start again as scheduled, beginning with our Raining Men event, then a celebration of artist-poets. Perhaps we could bring back our cancelled International Women’s Day event too.

Meanwhile it’s the perfect time to stockpile some poetry.

I’m thrilled to have my poem Carnlough Bay accepted for inclusion in the Northern Ireland section of the Places of Poetry anthology coming up soon. The anthology draws from the fascinating Places of Poetry map co-directed by Andrew McRae and Paul Farley.

Places of Poetry … aims to use creative writing to prompt reflection on national and cultural identities in England and Wales, celebrating the diversity, heritage and personalities of place.

The map is such a great idea. Goes to show that you can think something up (just guessing here) on a rainy Sunday and months later we’re all enjoying a beautiful reality.

Carnlough is a place my parents loved. My mother painted the harbour there in her last years and the pair of them probably dropped into the Londonderry Arms across the road in the course of the day. Thanks go to Anne-Marie Fyfe: it was on a poetry course of hers in Carnlough (with Cahal Dallat) a couple of years ago that I wrote a first draft of the poem. 

My Churchill Writers gave me flowers yesterday. I’m full of amazement & gratitude. What a fantastic lot they are.

We had our last session for the term in Churchill College, Cambridge yesterday. It’s a lovely chance to enjoy being together in an atmosphere where our writing selves, so often squeezed out in the rest of our lives, can flourish.

We shared out copies of our wonderful anthology – it’s even more exciting and beautifully written than I remembered – with special thanks to everyone involved in the publication, production of a stunning cover, sub-editing (that’s you, Caity Ross) and the writers themselves. You can order a copy here.

Lauren, a wonderful baker as well as a superb writer, brought us celebratory brownies which went down beautifully while we all discussed thrillers, using this blogpost of mine as our template. There’s always something new to be discovered whenever you sit down to write. During the exercise where we scribbled about our favourite thrillers, I found myself relishing not only the degree to which Endeavour (the young Morse) is an exile in his world, never quite fitting either with the police or the academic world, but also his, and Wallander‘s, capacity for naivete. Thriller detectives (whether they’re officially police or not) are usually well rounded characters with plenty of quirks. As well as a passion for justice, and courage, do we need them also to have a certain sweetness to accompany us through the dark thriller world? Holmes is not particularly sweet but Watson has it. Something to think about.

Have a happy writing Sunday.

At Faversham Literary Festival yesterday, poetry took over the whole day at The Limes pub. Poets and poetry do have a tendency to take over, I find, in the nicest possible way and the whole place was a rolling celebration of words, human vulnerabilities and laughter.

We started with a pop-up event featuring Word of Mouth #Whitstable. My guest poets were a wonderful range of published poets who’ve all read at Word of Mouth (originally Words on Waves): Sue Rose, Gillie Robic, Charlotte Ansell, Setareh Ibrahimi, Mary Anne Smith and (briefly) myself. It’s Mary Anne who looks as if she’s wearing John McCullough’s hat. These are all poets I admire very much and I was honoured to read alongside them. More details about them are here. Excellent husbanding going  on below, allowing Setareh to relax after her reading. John McCullough is an exceptional writer from Brighton, very moving – here he reads  from his excellent Reckless Paper Birds (Penned in the Margins). This is Luke Wright spellbinding us all with a beautifully crafted story that combines poetry, love and personal heartbreak, politics and rant: Remains of Logan DankworthAnother important highlight of the day was an hour devoted to Kent poet Rosemary McLeish who brought her poet friends Clair Meyrick and Barry Fentiman Hall in support. Sorry the photograph is blurry but this was an event of high emotion, generated by all three of these marvellous writers.

Faversham does actually have a ‘Love Lane’ so that was our title for an hour of poetry about love combining the words of Derek Sellen and Gary Studley with Mary Anne Smith and myself again. The breath-held hush while I read from Orion, my ‘classical love story’ published by Lapwing Publications in 2012, will stay with me for quite some time. 

Many thanks to everyone at Faversham Literary Festival for a fantastic series of events and for a complex, wide-ranging festival that hums along like a Rolls Royce and brings such literary excitement to us every year. One more day to go – see you there later!