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 ...

Wendy Allen, "Portrait in Mustard"

 

Wendy Allen’s debut pamphlet, Plastic Tubed Little Bird, was published in 2023 by Broken Sleep. She has collaborated with Dr Charley Barnes on the hybrid collection, freebleeding (Broken Sleep, 2024), a poetic consideration of the political act of Free Bleeding, shown through letters, poems and prose. Also published in 2024, Wendy collaborated with Galia Admoni on i get lost everywhere, you know this now, published by Salo. Wendy’s pamphlet, Portrait in Mustard, was published in October 2024 by Seren. She is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at MMU.  

About Portrait in Mustard, by Wendy Allen
Wendy Allen’s Portrait in Mustard celebrates sex and pleasure, whilst registering the risks of intimacy for straight women in a world where men’s pleasure often comes first. Via the unabashed tones of mustard yellow and metaphors of fruit and art, Allen’s poems create a manifesto for women’s independence, autonomy and joy. These are explicit, honest poems which embrace sex as an integral part of relationships and love. 

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

From Portrait in Mustard

Kathy Pimlott, "After the Rites and Sandwiches"

 

Kathy Pimlott, photo by Harry Wakefield

Kathy Pimlott’s collection, the small manoeuvres, was published by Verve Poetry Press in 2022 and she has two pamphlets with the Emma Press: Elastic Glue​ (2019) and Goose Fair Night (2016). She has been published widely in magazines, online and anthologies. Her poems have been longlisted, shortlisted and placed in competitions including Magma’s Editors’ Prize (2019); the Poetry Archive’s WordView 2020 Collection; the National Poetry Prize (2023), the Rialto Nature and Place Prize (2023) and the Buzzwords Competition (2023). She leads workshops in-person and online.​​ Pimlott was born and raised in Nottingham but has spent her adult life in London, the last 45+ years in Covent Garden, specifically Seven Dials, home of the broadsheet and the ballad. She has been a social worker and community activist, and worked on a political and financial risk journal, in arts television and artist development. She currently earns her living as the administrator of a charitable trust which undertakes community-led public realm projects.

About After the Rites and Sandwiches

Centred on a sudden accidental death – its shocking actuality, the aftermath, the admin – Kathy Pimlott’s third pamphlet is an honest, lyrical and nuanced journey through the complexity of bereavement.

As the world around her continues on – moths remain attracted to lights, Christmas comes and goes – Pimlott lives with the irreplaceable absence that follows the loss of a partner. Amid the pain and emotion is a streak of wry humour at the mundanity of settling affairs and a powerfully personal trajectory of moving through grief rather than moving on.

Across poems that take stock of the things people leave behind and the sometimes-painful memories of a long and textured marriage, After the Rites and Sandwiches tracks the rollercoaster of grief, guilt and regret without losing sight of the enduring salve of love.

You can read more about After the Rites and Sandwiches on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read a sample poem from the collection. 

From After the Rites and Sandwiches, by Kathy Pimlott

Prologue: First Date

Imagine we stand on a rope bridge over the canyon, where

rhododendrons cling to crevices, daring the corsairs to sever the

ropes with their scimitars, sipping cocktails that don’t make us

any drunker than we are. It’s sunset. From somewhere down

below, a small orchestra and mid-career soprano render Strauss’s

Four Last Songs, which makes the corsairs weep until tears roll

down their tattooed forearms. This lasts for an hour, no sudden

nightfall, no bats. The corsairs exhaust themselves. Chastened,

they return to their three-masted galleon anchored in the bay.

How very lovely the sky – that tenderness before light dies.

Masterclasses and Guest Lectures, Autumn 2024

Here is this semester's programme of Creative Writing guest lectures and masterclasses happening this term in the Centre for New Writing at the University of Leicester. All the events are free and all but one are open to everybody: students, staff and the public alike. If you'd like further information, please email Jonathan Taylor (jt265@le.ac.uk).

Gavin Esler: "Writing the News & More": A Writer's Workshop

Wednesday 20 November 2024, 4-5pm, room TBC

Gavin will also offer a writing workshop. He'll discuss finding compelling news stories, ensuring accuracy, as well as how to tell stories effectively. This free workshop is for University of Leicester students only. It will be perfect for Journalism, Media, English and Creative Writing students. Numbers are limited, so please sign up in advance. Please email Harry Whitehead to book a spot: hdw5@le.ac.uk. This workshop is convened by Tor Clark and Harry Whitehead for Literary Leicester.  

Gavin Esler in Conversation: Literary Leicester event 

Wed 20 Nov 2024, 6.30-7.30pm in Sir Bob Burgess Building Lecture Theatre 2

Gavin Esler, one of the country’s leading journalists, broadcasters and authors, was BBC Newsnight’s chief presenter from 2003 to 2014. He is the bestselling author of several works on the state of Britain as well as five novels. In this conversation, reading and Q&A, Gavin will discuss his most recent work, Britain Is Better Than This: Why a Great Country is Failing Us. Expect off-the-cuff wisdom, humour at the absurdities of what passes for our constitution, and more. You can book tickets for this free Literary Leicester event here.

Cathi Rae: "Poems of Other People's Lives": Poetry Reading

Tuesday 3 December 2024, 12-1pm, room TBC

This guest lecture and poetry reading is part of the undergraduate module Introduction to Writing Creatively 1. All are welcome to attend. 

Paul Taylor-McCartney:  "Imagine If You Can": Thoughts on Writing Dystopian Fiction

Tuesday 3 December 2024, 4-5pm in room Fielding Johnson L66

This guest lecture is part of the undergraduate module Using Stories. All are welcome, but places are limited. If you'd like to attend, please email jt265@le.ac.uk in advance. 

Kit de Waal: "Research Tips for Writers": Masterclass

Wednesday 4 December, 2-4pm in room Attenborough 104

This masterclass is part of the MA module Research Methods in Creative Writing. All are welcome, but places are limited. If you'd like to attend, please email jt265@le.ac.uk in advance. 

Rachael Clyne, "You'll Never Be Anyone Else"

Rachael Clyne, from Glastonbury, is widely published in journals and anthologies. Now retired, Rachael was a professional actor in her youth, appearing in TV dramas and series including Coronation St. She also worked in theatre and in the 70s, briefly joined the Sadista Sisters female rock cabaret. She also played the lead in Victoria Wood’s first play, Talent. This has fed into her enjoyment for live readings of her poetry. She later trained and worked for over 30 years as a psychotherapist, practicing in various settings and running counselling trainings. She has published two self-help books, for cancer patients and on self-esteem issues, and co-founded one of the first cancer support resources in London.

It is only in later life that she began to seriously develop her poetry. Her prizewinning collection, Singing at the Bone Tree (Indigo Dreams, 2014), concerns our lost connection with nature. Her pamphlet, Girl Golem (4word.org, 2018) explores her Jewish migrant heritage. This new collection, You’ll Never Be Anyone Else, was published by Seren in 2023.

About You'll Never Be Anyone Else
You’ll Never Be Anyone Else reflects the poet’s journey of coming to terms with her sense of otherness. Her alter-ego Girl Golem, based on the legendary man made from clay to protect Jewish people from persecution, appears at several points in the book. Rachael explores her Jewish and LGBTQ+ identity, which she says felt like a double whammy during the era in which she grew up. She surveys attitudes both past and present. This collection joins a chorus of poetic voices who challenge us with their difference and touch our shared humanity. Rachael uses a variety of forms to explore migrant heritage, sexual orientation, relationships, domestic violence and ageing. Her work is peppered with quirky imagery and humour, even in its darkest corners. The poem, "Jew-a-lingo – Codeswitching for Jews," takes the form of a lesson in how minority groups behave within their culture, then self-censor in the outside world. The book presents a distinctive voice from someone who has learned self-acceptance and as a therapist has used that knowledge to help others do similar.

You can read more about You'll Never Ben Anyone Else on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read a sample poem from the collection. 

From You'll Never Be Anyone Else, by Rachael Clyne

Three Piece Suite

Mother, the rickety chair, teeters; 
needs a wedge to steady her. 
A chair from the Old Country, 
carried on backs, luggage racks, smuggled

across borders. Father, a wooden 
ironing board, hides in the understairs 
cupboard, lost in the hiss of his steam-iron, 
whistle of hearing aids and bash of his klomper.

Grandma, the leathery pouffe, smells 
of olives, lemon tea and shit on shaky fingers. 
Between chair, ironing board and pouffe, 
I, their tailor’s cushion, bristle with pins.


Girl Golem

The night they blew life into her, she clung 
bat-like to the womb-wall. A girl golem, 
a late bonus, before the final egg dropped. 
She divided, multiplied, her hand-buds bloomed.
her tail vanished into its coccyx and the lub-dub 
of her existence was bigger than her nascent head.

 
She was made as a keep-watch, in case 
new nasties tried to take them away. 
The family called her tchotchkele, their little cnadle,  
said she helped to make up for lost numbers –
as if she could compensate for millions. 

With x-ray eyes, she saw she was trapped 
in a home for the deaf and blind, watched them 
blunder into each other’s neuroses. Her task, 
to hold up their world, be their assimilation ticket, 
find a nice boy and mazel tov – grandchildren!

But she was a hotchpotch golem, schmutter garment 
that would never fit, trying to find answers 
without a handbook. When she turned eighteen, 
she walked away, went in search of her own kind, 
tore their god from her mouth. 


Golem: man made from clay and Kabbalistic spells, by rabbis to protect Jews from persecution. Truth: אֶמֶת was written on his forehead and God’s name on his tongue. Tchotchkele (diminutive of tchotchke): a trinket, a cute child. Mazel tov: good luck. Cnadle: a dumpling. Schmutter: a rag. 

Unfitting

           After Caroline Bird

Like a glove on the wrong hand, 
the moon out at noon. I was salt in tea,
shoving my leg into a sleeve,
stuck on the singles table at weddings,                                                   
stifling the crush on my best friend,  
calling my partner they, or trying 
to book a double room in a B&B.

How I distanced myself from those women
in the bar on the Kings Road, 
where some wore cufflinks, others, 
heavy perfume, tight dresses. 
I couldn’t bear a skirt, without 
the safety of a gusset.

The chips from my shoulders make 
a magnificent outfit: gloved, salty 
and stitched with gold. 

You’ll never be anyone else

so you – yes you, with your warts and wings 
will just have to do.
 
Acceptance is your food and shelter, without which 
you are brushwood

left to the mercy of any foul wind. 
Stop drinking the poison 

labelled Hate me. It’s that simple.
I didn’t say easy.