If you're in London on Thursday, 20th March, come and join me at the ETNA Centre. I'll be reading from 'Thrift' and more. There's an open mic too! #poetrycommunity

'no drum beating – just sheer poignancy – showing rather than telling.'
From @matthewmcsmith.bsky.social @blackboughpoetry.bsky.social

Thank you!

Thank you!

Book of the Month! What a great start to Springtime!

I'm delighted my collection, 'Thrift', Palewell Press, is Poetry Book of the Month at Black Bough Poetry.
'It is this sense of freedom that we experience on Alison Lock's experiential poems which take us not only out of (...)
oppression but outside the self.' Diolch!

Batik artwork created with wax and cloth to create a pictorial artwork of a cup filled with a orange brown tea on a saucer with a small spoon on a table surface, viewed from slightly above

Sarah L Luginbill, US Fine Art artist working in watercolour, and batik #womensart

Yes!

Love after Love by Derek Walcott, from PoemHunter.com

Sometimes I choose a theme for #poetryforwellbeing at Conwy Culture Centre. This time we shared a variety of poems by @sheenaghpugh.bsky.social, Leo Boix, Gillian Clarke, Henry Normal, Mary Robinson, @caldwell10.bsky.social,@glynedwards.bsky.social, Rudyard Kipling, John Masefield, Derek Walcott.

A coloured pencil drawing portrait of a Red Fox. Her head and shoulder lean in from the right as she has her eyes fixed on her prey in the distance... the background is mottled of shades of green and cream by using pan pastels and a sponge on pastel mat paper. #fox #foxes

My camera isn't working properly after I fell over and dropped it in the snow! 🙄 So, here's my recent drawing called 'Eyes on the prize' capturing the moment just before a lovely vixen pounced on her prey! 🧡 Happy new week everyone! 🕊️

#SciArt #NearbyNature2025 #mammals #FoxOfTheDay #wildlife

Pen and ink illustration featuring a hippo-like creature with eyes tightly closed attempting to walk forwards towards the right while battling lashing winds and rain in the darkness

After living through the Nazi & atomic bomb eras, Finnish author/artist Tove Jansson's writings would often encompass fearful ideas about loss of a familiar world. However she would balance this with characters who encompassed kindness & community, even in the darkest times #WomensArt

For this day.

Today is Blue Monday (supposedly the saddest day of the year). If you need a little joy in your life, take a look at our beautiful new issue of Dust Poetry Magazine 💙

This book got the synapses firing. Find out which poem I liked most in @tazrahman.bsky.social’s collection.

@serenbooks.bsky.social

Winter-themed border of blue snowflakes on a pale grey background. Text reads: Publishing Your Work | Poetry & Writing Calls for Submissions January 2025: Journals, Competitions, Bursaries, Residencies.

Over 160 calls for submissions of poetry, fiction, flash, non-fiction, art, photography & more - competitions, literary journals, residencies, bursaries etc - open or with deadlines in January 2025. Best of luck & pls share! www.thisiswordbox.com/wordbox-blog...

Hello friends and poets. I’m
Joining Bluesky on a high - with a poem selected by @thepoetryarchive.bsky.social for their Poetry Archive Now! 2024. Congratulations to all the winners and huge thanks to the judges.

Hello people!

Would you like to know that Atrium will be opening our inbox for a very small submissions window of 10 days from 27th January?

There you go then.

Details of how to send will appear on the site on 28th.

Please follow the Penrhos campaign 👇 to save a beloved nature reserve. #follow #followFriday #saveourforest #ecocide

"To be a witch, then, is to know words," So Mayer

MIDWINTER AT SKER — Sustainable Wales Ice on the rockpools and salt in the hail that lashed across the black shipwrecking hooks of Sker Point. I shrank into my coat, tugged my hood over my eyes and retreated.

Midwinter is behind us now of course, but I thought I'd share a recent piece by me about ice and salt, the tenacity of rock pipits, and the working class mystic Jacob Boehme... (and thanks to Sustainable Wales for publishing it)
www.sustainablewales.org.uk/a-kenfig-jou...

Perhaps Yona is a penguin pebble.

'The people
triumphed with this flame,
retelling my story
as if I was a cheat'

Prometheus regrets his allyship with humanity.

Unpublished poem. 🔥

The University of the Self #48 The Muses of Yore

While I am busy putting together another Substack article, I realise I forgot to share a link to the one I wrote a few days ago - this one is a thinkpiece on the idea of Muses.
burnj.substack.com/p/the-univer...

Cut! It! Up! Special Visit the post for more.

VOIDSPACE 13 🖤 now live. Including Cut It Up! texts from other works, reworked. Several of my works are included

Huge thanks to Katy Joyce Naylor and everyone at @voidspacezine.bsky.social

#literature #immersive #interactive #art #litmag #voidspace #poetry

voidspacezine.com/cut-it-up-sp...

A little bit of news I'd like to share - my new poetry pamphlet, 'How To Shape Our Mouths' will be published by Black Cat Poetry Press in 2026. Black Cat are one of my favourite indie poetry presses, so I'm delighted to be joining their author list! Thanks so much to Satya, Catherine and Ophira 🐈‍⬛❤️

Graham Mort Welcome to Salt, one of the UK’s great independent publishing houses. Since our founding in 1999, we have published some of the world’s foremost writers.

You can get my book of short fiction 'Like Fado and Other Stories' here in the @saltpublishing.com winter sale:
www.saltpublishing.com/collections/...

Drama on 3 - The Dead - BBC Sounds Epiphanies at a Twelfth Night party in Dublin. By James Joyce. Read by Jonathan Forbes.

Beautifully produced reading of ‘The Dead’ (broadcast on the Epiphany) www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/... #RadioThreeDrama #radio #JamesJoyce

A number of copies of Daughter of the Sun laid on top of one another. The cover is white with short, dark purple lines.

Copies of DAUGHTER OF THE SUN by Rachel Spence have arrived! 🎉

A retelling of Medea, reimagined not as a murderous witch but a child-free scientist ahead of her time...

You can pre-order here: https://buff.ly/4ii3HNS

If you've not yet registered, hurry, places are limited. It's free and LIVE at the Club for Acts and Actors, Covent Garden, London. 28 Jan, the Red Door Poets Winter Party, with Open Mic, and headliners Simon Maddrell, Robin Houghton and music from Steve Brayne. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/red-door-p...