Fiona Theokritoff, "New Uses for a Wand"

Fiona Theokritoff is a poet and educator, with a science background. She lives in Nottinghamshire, and has worked as a Creative Writing tutor since 2017. She did her Creative Writing MA at Nottingham Trent University in 2019, and as one half of Wine and Words, she performs her work at book festivals and other book events across Nottinghamshire. In the 1980s, Fiona studied Ecology and Environmental Science, and went on to have careers in publishing and as a health practitioner. Her first book, New Uses for a Wand, was published in June 2024 by Five Leaves. Her work has appeared in poetry journals including Mslexia, The Interpreter’s House, Under the Radar, Ink Sweat and Tears and Consilience, a journal created to forge connections between the sciences and creative arts.

About New Uses for a Wand, by Fiona Theokritoff 
New Uses for a Wand is a book about transformation, from the way our world has transformed myths and old magic into science, to the transformations that we as humans experience: those we reach for and those that are thrust upon us. 

In this wide-ranging pamphlet there are poems about lapis lazuli, the Periodic Table, the James Webb Space Telescope, and about people being in love, growing old, facing loss and taking revenge.     

You can read more about New Uses for a Wand on the publisher’s website here. Below, you can read two sample poems from the collection.

From New Uses for a Wand

The One Thing Brian Cox Taught Me

At the outer edges of our eyeballs,

184 million rod cells stand

ready for this low-light moment.

We are seeing stars.

The tiny lights hover,

we are bathed in photon streams,

two lovers full of whispered dreams,

starlight from faraway and forever

        star light

          star bright

        shine on my retina

                  tonight

A 13 billion light-year journey ends,

illuminates us   with a flash

of rhodopsin       workaday magic.

Ancient light is

        perceived,

        captured,

        persists,

                dances

            free in our eyes,

answering the lovers’ eternal question…

so it is true, that nothing        in this moment

has existed        in quite this way before.

 

Photosynthesis

          Magnesium  - Mg2+ - activates enzymes in phosphate metabolism. 

          Constituent of chlorophyll. 

Biology: A Functional Approach, MBV Roberts

The Magus takes centre stage,

and in his own limelight,

creates alchemy

with simple wandering players:

                           sunlight

6CO2 + 6H2O –––––––→ C6H12O6 + 6O2

Photons cascade through stacks

of green lamellae coins, exchange

one currency for another.

Sugar strings will become

coiled sugar rings,

a chorus line of can-can dancers,

energy locked in their sweet skirts.

Released, that sun-sparked flash

means a flower will bloom

a grub will feed.

Green blood throbs.

Silent Magus sits.

Catherine Ayres, "Janus"

Catherine Ayres is a teacher and poet from Alnwick in Northumberland. Her first collection, Amazon, was published by Indigo Dreams in 2016. She is widely published both in print and online. She has recently completed a Creative Writing PhD at Northumbria University, focusing on women living on Hadrian's Wall at the time of Roman occupation. She studied English Literature at the University of Leicester 1991-1994.

About Janus, by Catherine Ayres
Slipping through time over the course of a calendar year, the poems in Janus, like the two-headed Roman god, look both forward and back, charting the significant moments in an ordinary life. This collection is an exploration of those memories which "make circles / glint like birds in the light."

You can read more about Janus on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read two sample poems from the collection. 

From Janus 

June 1983 - a weekend playing out with my best friend Emma

Oddbods

We embroider our edges with slow smiles,
tuck ourselves into home-made jumpers
and hide in our mothers’ expectations.
We are happiest in the avocado shadow of bathrooms,
turning over sea urchins with trembling hands;
or crouched next to French windows, listening
to a scratched recording of birdsong.
Our guinea pigs are called Monica - they are both boys.
We like our eggs hard boiled, our celery lined with salt.
We know how to use a soup spoon.
We do not understand posters; all our clippings
are pinned to floral wallpaper. Our bedrooms
are like conches, delicate and full of whispers.
(It is often hard to leave them).
Laughter clatters round us like knives falling in another room;
we are soft and solemn as Sundays and do not flinch.
One day we will live in the tree on the hill,
hang our horse brasses from its branches.
When our dandelion clocks swim like spiders
towards the moon, we will teach the teddies about Jesus,
serenade the cowpats with our favourite hymns.
It won’t matter that our dollies are lonely;
we will draw them close, wipe the tears
from their large, unblinking eyes.

April 2020 - lockdown

Mum

When I crunch down your drive
with some carrots, a wholemeal loaf -
unsliced – you stand in the garage
and use the remote to tilt its door

emerging slowly, feet first,
like a breech birth, or Darth Vader,
if Darth Vader wore Skechers, a John Lewis
top. For a moment, your face floats

then you step forward, submissive,
as if these groceries were the Host,
and I step back, as if your eyes
were metre rules. We’re silent,

ceremonious, a bit pissed off. Mum,
we’re more alike than I let on.
Behind you, in the kitchen,
there’s an awkward hug. Cheese scones.

November News 2024

We're now well into the second half of the Autumn term, and heading at full speed in the direction of Christmas, so it feels like a good time to share news from students and staff in the Centre for New Writing at the University of Leicester. Lots has been happening, as you can see below, since our last news round-up which you can read here. 

Student and Staff News

Firstly, if you haven't done so already, do have a look at the guest readings and masterclasses we're hosting this Autumn. All of them are free to attend and are open to everyone - staff, students and public alike. You can see the full list here. 

The dates for this academic year's Literary Leicester Festival have now been revealed: this year's amazing festival will take place 19-22 March 2025. All events are free and open to everyone. 

As many of you will know by now, THREE of our current PhD Creative Writing students were successful in this year's prestigious Bridport Prize. Joe Bedford won first prize for the Bridport Short Story Prize 2024. Jane Simmons was shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize 2024, and Laura Besley was shortlisted for the Bridport Flash Fiction Prize 2024. This is an amazing achievement, and congratulations to them all! You can see the full results here. 

Congratulations to PhD Creative Writing student Kirsten Arcadio who passed her viva in October. You can read more about Kirsten's PhD on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Elizabeth Chell, MA Creative Writing graduate, has reviewed two new poetry pamphlets by Cathi Rae, PhD Creative Writing student, on Everybody's Reviewing here. 

The Mad Road by Laurie Cusack, PhD Creative graduate, has been favourably reviewed in The Morning Star. You can read the review here. Laurie originally drafted the short stories in The Mad Road as part of his PhD. 

New Walk Editions, which is co-edited by Nick Everett, has published two new pamphlets: Polly Walshe’s Silver Fold and Graeme Richardson’s Last of the Coalmine Choirboys. You can see more details on New Walk Editions' website here; and you can register here for the free online launch reading by both poets at 7pm on Wednesday 27 November.

Tracey Foster, MA Creative Writing graduate, has reviewed The Gallows Pole by Benjamin Myers for Everybody's Reviewing here, and The Mirror and the Palette: Rebellion, Revolution and Resilience by Jennifer Higgie here. 

Congratulations to PhD Creative Writing student Kathy Hoyle whose story "Cockleshell Girl" has been nominated for Best of the Net 2025 by South Florida Poetry Journal. You can read the story here. 

One of the key remits of the Centre for New Writing is an interest in interdisciplinary approaches. Felicity James is currently working both for the Centre for New Writing and the Stoneygate Centre for Empathic Healthcare to investigate how reading and writing can encourage and maintain empathy. Her role is to help embed Creative Writing and reading literature in the medical curriculum at Leicester. With Marianne Scahill-Pape from Attenborough Arts, she ran a special subject for fifth-year medical students in 2024, featuring art, Creative Writing, and Romantic, Victorian and contemporary literature. Their report on the course, "Creative Approaches to Empathic Healthcare: The Polyphony," has now been published, and you can read it here. 

Welcome to Maisie Ridgway, who has recently joined us as a Leverhulme post-doctoral research fellow. Her project is entitled "Coal Ecologies: Inscription, Inheritance and the Anthropocene."

Congratulations to MA Creative Writing graduate Karen Rust, who is now Festival Curator of the Oundle Festival of Literature. 

Sally Shaw, MA Creative Writing graduate, has reviewed Ghost Town by Jeff Young for Everybody's Reviewing here. 

Jonathan Taylor's memoir, A Physical Education: On Bullying, Discipline & Other Lessons, was published by Goldsmiths Press in September. You can read more about it on Creative Writing at Leicester here. Jonathan has also recently published related articles about bullying in The Times Higher here and The Morning Star here. Sally Shaw, MA Creative Writing graduate, has reviewed Jonathan's book for Everybody's Reviewing here. Jonathan will be reading from and talking about his memoir, along with author James Scudamore, at Five Leaves Bookshop Nottingham, on the evening of Monday 25 November from 7pm. Everyone is welcome. You can see more details about this event and book a place here. Jonathan also interviewed poet Louise Peterkin for Everybody's Reviewing here. 

Congratulations to Harry Whitehead, whose novel White Road has been contracted to publish in September 2025 in print by Claret Press and audiobook by WF Howe. 

 

Polly Walshe, "Silver Fold"

Polly Walshe is a poet and painter. In recent years her poems have appeared in Acumen, Pennine Platform, PN Review, The London Magazine, 14 Magazine, Shearsman, The High Window and The Spectator. She was longlisted three times in the National Poetry Competition, in 2019, 2020 and 2022. In 2019, a selection of her poetry featured alongside Melissa Ruben’s paintings in the exhibition Night Vision(s) at the Atlantic Gallery in New York City, and in the same year she won the Frogmore Prize. Her novel The Latecomer was published by Random House in 1997 and won a Betty Trask Award. Silver Fold is her first pamphlet of poems.

The pamphlet is published along with Graeme Richardson’s Last of the Coalmine Choirboys by New Walk Editions, which is co-edited by University of Leicester Associate Professor of American Literature and Creative Writing, Nick Everett. Register here for the free online launch reading by Polly Walshe and Graeme Richardson at 7pm on Wednesday 27 November.

 

About Silver Fold, by Polly Walshe
We are always starting out – from ourselves and our pasts, from our own words and ideas. The poems in Silver Fold are preoccupied with how far from ourselves we can ever get, and with our struggle to make words say the fresh things we constantly need them to say.

You can read more about Silver Fold on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read two sample poems from the collection. 

From Silver Fold

Bridge Building

The day they came to take the phones away
Was a revealing one. Some threw devices

Into hoppers happily, lobbing them high,
Watching them fall with a whoop. Others tried

To bury, cancel, download, go AWOL. All
Pointless. The signals were dying

And the servers had combusted. Myself?
Loved it, hoped all the long-ago winters might

Return to us, the looking-at-faces, the nothing-
To-do, the night in our horses’ manes,

The bright law of the morning. We’d be
Building a bridge into space as we were meant to,

We’d laugh as we laughed once, like a river
Rising for no reason, scarcely contained –

For a few seconds fearsome, then drawing back,
Earth different, small stones rearranged.


Moving to the Coast

Don’t think of moving to the coast
Since everything you need is here.

Cars rushing by make an evening tide
And there’s something of the wharf

About these traffic lights. Gulls swarm
Behind our bin lorries on collection day

Then politely disperse.
Gulls by the sea are known to be worse.

However far you go you’ll never feel,
Sufficiently, there. Why trouble yourself?

Rumours of a better place won’t stop
But every halt has empty shops

And dummkopf men in secret clubs
And the lonely women they fear.

The painful laughter of those women
Clatters forever everywhere. They yearn –

The women and the men – for gestures
From an unconventional god

Yet find it hard to think
That Being’s bird might sing

Along this landlocked street
In preference to Scarborough or Deal

Or any flaking crust shored up
Against the indecision of the sea.

Coast is the ravelled edge of time.
It’s where you are.

Helen Ivory, "Constructing a Witch"

Helen Ivory is a poet and visual artist. She edits the webzine Ink Sweat and Tears and teaches for Arvon and the National Centre for Writing Academy. She has published six collections with Bloodaxe Books. The most recent, Constructing a Witch, is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation (2024). Fool’s World, a collaborative Tarot with artist Tom de Freston (Gatehouse Press), won the 2016 Saboteur Best Collaborative Work award. A poem from her chapbook Maps of the Abandoned City (SurVision 2019 ) was selected as Poem on the Underground, and Wunderkammer: New and Selected Poems was published by MadHat in the US in 2023. Her work has been translated into Ukrainian, Polish, Spanish, Croatian and Greek for Versopolis. In 2024 she received a Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors, an award recognising the achievement and distinction of individual poets. 

About Constructing a Witch, by Helen Ivory
Despite the Devil being conceived to direct human baseness away from our goodly selves, there has always been sin in the world. The Bible has it that woman is the weaker vessel, therefore her inferior ways could easily let the Devil into the house, and into her oh so corruptible body – and thus the story begins.  

Helen Ivory’s sixth collection Constructing a Witch fixes on the monstering and the scapegoating of women and on the fear of ageing femininity. The witch appears as the barren, child-eating hag; she is a lustful seductress luring men to a path of corruption; she is a powerful or cantankerous woman whose cursing must be silenced by force.

These bewitching poems explore the witch archetype and the witch as human woman. They examine the nature of superstition and the necessity of magic and counter-magic to gain a fingerhold of agency, when life is chaotic and fragile. In the poems of Constructing a Witch Helen Ivory investigates witch tourism, the witch as outsider, cultural representations of the witch, female power and disempowerment, the menopause, and how the female body has been used and misunderstood for centuries.

You can read more about Constructing a Witch on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read two sample poems from the collection. 

From Constructing a Witch

Some definitions of Witch

 

Carcass of rags

the dead-rat stink of old milk.

A beyond the pale beggar,

runt of the litter.

*

Gleaner of herbs

hallower of the compass.

Cunning hedge rider,

measurer of fire.

*

 

Midwife of shadows

low vixen with blood on its maw.

Deliverer of silence 

to the henhouse.

 

*

 

Lighter than a bible,

priestly ink is gravity

beneath her flying feet.

Her body writes into the sky.

 

*

 

Blended with the earth

she wears a moss cloak.

Some procure her remedies.

She is a scapegoat for bad luck.

 

*

 

A childless wraith

in a child’s picture book.

The worst mother 

man ever invented.

 

*

 

The method of kettling 

troublesome women.

A peck of black pepper

in the milk-and-water blether.

 

*

 

Practitioner of forgotten ways;

of rituals, sayer of spells.

Barefoot earth-listener,

older than God or television.

 

The Gift

There once was a lonely woman who replaced her heart with an apple. She took a sharp knife and engraved her name in its freshly shined skin, and those of the names of these spirits: Cosmer, Synady, Heupide. She stood in the middle of a bridge as the wind heaped bright dying leaves about. She balanced the apple in the palm of her hand, but nobody came for her love. And the earth moved through the seasons, and still nobody came. This carried on till the apple resembled some devil they say, and the woman herself had transmuted to dust.

One day a quiet pandemonium emanated from the apple and the townspeople hid behind themselves, too cowed to approach. A man stepped from the crowd with the air of a judge. He decreed that indeed, the apple was infested with foul spirits, and pitched it into the river with his long-legged boot. 

Andrew Taylor, "European Hymns"

 

Andrew Taylor lives and works in Nottingham. He is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent University. He has published four collections of poetry with Shearsman Books, edited Peter Finch’s Collected Poems, and his critical book about Finch is forthcoming from Seren Books. His website is here. 

About European Hymns, by Andrew Taylor
European Hymns traces the calendar year throughout the seasons. Beginning with the optimism that spring brings, the book offers up the arrival of the nightingales in rural France (an ongoing interest of Taylor’s) then navigates through summer trips to cities, takes in periods of reflection amongst the closing down of a summer house, the sudden shift to Autumn and the inevitable descent into winter.

The book is Taylor’s most wide-ranging collection to-date, in turns observational and detailed. The poems also deal with the changes in the natural world, while others offer snapshots of moments in time, with Taylor often re-employing his minimalist practice to useful effect.

You can read more about European Hymns on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read two sample poems from the collection. 

From European Hymns

Eydís Poem
 
Bean for leaf
a ritual swapped
 
the darkest hour
is nearest dawn
 
arctic drone
remote scents
 
bay & rosemary
subtle draught
 
piano bones
displayed
go conduct clouds

Midwinter Poem
 
Clean the snuffer with a sharp
blade decorate with found materials
Pygmalion’s cello & guitar duvet to
settle the stomach 15 hours in the
saddle is enough for anyone close
the shutters before lighting candles
let’s quieten the draught appropriateness
of light as Bernadette’s ‘Midwinter Day’
50 years to the day Julianna’s voice
from Iceland with the strings finally
fade Mary’s sequencing works well
a heart hand drawn on the envelope
bearing a gift slow burn of aged oak
though birch is the slowest raise the
temperate deliberately it’s about
preservation one jar of honey mustard
per customer the store is quiet the track
is being cleared in advance of works
entrance to the station is barred a world
of separateness within the season
the lane reveals its secrets at dusk
get the picture on watch the screen
like a list of sources Kim sits on the rug
Sydney wants a haircut at 4.00 a.m.
wait for the hit it folds in nicely west coast
standing in for the east mainline gets you
there in time fling the hat from the roof
watch it tumble to the park European
stamps for the passport &
exchange currencies sketches of France
plans made & recorded in the six month
old notebook sweetness of incense as
it gathers on the landing magic of the
espresso bean its symbols of health
& happiness

Linda Gask, "Out of Her Mind: How We Are Failing Women's Mental Health and What Must Change"

Linda Gask is a retired consultant psychiatrist and academic at the University of Manchester and also the author of two memoirs about her own experience of mental illness, The Other Side of Silence: A Psychiatrist’s Memoir of Depression and of moving to live in Orkney off the north coast of Scotland, and Finding True North: The Healing Power of Place. She is also a lifelong feminist. 

About Out of Her Mind, by Linda Gask
Despite advances in our understanding of mental health, women and girls are still disproportionately disadvantaged when it comes to addressing the real causes and consequences of their mental health problems such as depression and self-harm. 

Why are they hurting so much today and why is it so hard for them to find the kind of help they really need? What is happening in a health care system overburdened by demand? Why have so many women and girls lost faith in mental health care? Are women, once again, being forgotten? 

Drawing on many new interviews with women of all ages and backgrounds who tell her their stories, expert commentators, current events, recent history and her personal and professional experience, Linda Gask examines how society, mental health care and even feminism are failing women’s mental health. 

And above all she answers the questions "What must change?" and "What can we all do?"

You can read more about Out of Her Mind on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read an excerpt from the book. 

From Out of Her Mind

"Men are the losers now": Discuss.

Manchester 2016. An email arrived out of the blue asking if I would like to take part in a debate for Women’s Week.

"Why me?"

"Because you know the facts – you are an academic."

But I’m also a psychiatrist.

"OK, so which side do you want me to speak for?"

I didn’t really want to argue for the motion but knew I could make a case for it if I had to. A good one. For two decades we have been bombarding men across the world to try to get them to talk about their feelings before it’s too late. The suicide rate for men in the UK is three times the rate for women. It has always been higher for men but since the crash in 2008 and the recession that followed, it hasn’t just been young men who have been taking their own lives – the greatest rise for suicide is in middle-aged men who not only lose their self-esteem, but also sometimes their will to live when their jobs disappear, and their relationships break down. How we feel about ourselves and the way in which the world treats us has a significant impact on our mental health. It is key to our sense of wellbeing, and it can be very hard for men; but that’s not the whole story. Many women are desperate too and women really are still losing out disproportionately, particularly in the mental health stakes.

"We have speakers for the motion," came the reply. "We’d like you to second on the other side."

Assuaging the slight dent to my ego at not being asked to lead with a huge dollop of relief that I wouldn’t have to speak first, I agreed to do it. Because women are still suffering with their mental health and are not being heard ...