Geraldine Bell - Featured Poem

As part of our annual programme of guest speakers for Creative Writing, the poet Geraldine Bell gave an excellent talk this week, for first-year creative writers, other students and the public. She talked in detail about her experience of critical and reflective writing in relation to her own poetry. Geraldine is in her final year of a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester, and her poems have previously been published in Ambit, Dream Catcher and Brittle Star magazines. Here is one of her poems:

Pink Papers

These punishing pink paper notes

Are always telling me what’s to-do.

Their dog-eared corners growl and snarl

And aggressively pull at my shoe.

To slice one errand off the list;

Thou art the best o’ the cut throats.

But three more Fleances take its place

As heirs in black, on paper notes.

These punishing pink paper notes

Are always telling me what to do

With a righteous sense of duty;

And worst, in my own writing too.

Geraldine Bell