Coming Soon

I am working on a new collection of poems inspired by the family secrets I discovered when I read letters in a suitcase left to me by my mother.

It was many years after her death before I plucked up the courage to read the letters – indeed I almost burned them, unread, as I felt like a voyeur.

Then, prompted by a writing exercise from poet Jo Bell in The 52, I wrote a New Year poem which said ‘this is the year I burn unread all the letters my mother kept’.

Now I am glad I didn’t carry out my threat to ‘blaze them on a bonfire – watch them vanish into thin air.’ Instead I read them, transcribed them, obsessed about them and was inspired by them.

The initial poems became my dissertation for an MA in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU). I am working on a full collection which I hope will be published next year – and which will be my manuscript submission for the Master of Fine Arts at MMU, due in September 2022.