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 ...

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.

Michael Bartholomew-Biggs, "Identified Flying Objects"

Michael Bartholomew-Biggs is a retired mathematician living in London. He is the current poetry editor of the online magazine London Grip and, in partnership with Nancy Mattson, has for over twenty years organised the Islington reading series Poetry in the Crypt (now re-invented as Poetry Above the Crypt). His latest book, Identified Flying Objects, contains poems triggered by quotations from the prophet Ezekiel and thus maintains the fondness for unusually-themed collections shown in his previous publications Poems in the Case, which combines poetry with a murder mystery, and Fred & Blossom which tells a more or less true story of love and light aviation in the 1930s.

 

About Identified Flying Objects, by Michael Bartolomew-Biggs
The USP for Identified Flying Objects is that all the poems are linked to quotations from the Old Testament Book of Ezekiel. The idea of using this as a basis for a collection came to the author when he was semi-immobilised with a broken leg and, like Ezekiel, was working out how to deal with misfortune. The Book of Ezekiel is of course concerned with a much bigger misfortune – the plight of the Israelites taken captive by the Babylonians during the 6th century BC – and it seeks both to explain why God let it happen and also to offer a divine promise of eventual release.

Whatever one believes about its theological content, the Book of Ezekiel does contain some remarkable passages such as the first proposal for a heart transplant and an almost cinematic image of a valley full of dry bones which reassemble themselves and then gain sinews, flesh and skin to become living bodies. More down-to-earth (and still relevant) are the stern and imaginative rebukes Ezekiel delivers to corrupt and abusive rulers and his exasperated likening of the general public to ill-natured sheep led by incompetent and irresponsible shepherds. And of course there are also his mysterious visions in the sky which inspire the collection’s title poem.

Although the poems in this collection have been triggered by some of Ezekiel’s words they do not aim to paraphrase Ezekiel’s message. Some of them place an Ezekiel-like (or Ezekiel-lite!) speaker in a modern setting while others offer a twenty-first century reaction to a single image from the prophet’s text. Ezekiel might recognise – even endorse – the sentiments of a few of the poems; but many of them would probably puzzle him or even arouse his disapproval.  Attitudes have changed in the last two and half thousand years and Ezekiel’s view of the collection might well include a Hebrew equivalent of the word “woke”. But, even if his words have been carelessly and anachronistically appropriated, Ezekiel’s prophetic voice might still be heard, urging present-day readers to resist the regrettably common human tendency to ignore well-founded predictions.

From Identified Flying Objects

Heart Transplants - Side Effects & FAQs  

Rejection is a major issue
when a doctor takes a stone-still heart  
and substitutes donated tissue.

But if physicians have dismissed you
as a hopeless case you’ll take the risk – 
rejection’s not your biggest issue.

At the brink of that abyss you
wish you had been born with nerves of steel
instead of much-too-nervous tissue.

When something inside’s gone amiss you
might not need replacement body parts
so much as fresh supplies of sisu.
**

You meet your surgeons who address you
only from behind a mask: perhaps 
because they do not want to face you?

You’re told by the anaesthetist you
sleep before you’ve counted down from ten.
You hope his needle doesn’t miss you.

You dream that nurses come and kiss you
wearing scrubs – are antiseptic pecks 
distractions so they can undress you?

And when you start to convalesce, you
don’t get solid food: will you survive
digesting only tiramisu?
**

I’ll turn your stone hearts into flesh: you …
needn’t care what rocks you’ll lose – your faith
in miracles is what’s at issue.

If old resentment finds a fissure
In your new-made heart my remedy
is grafting in forgiving tissue.

(Redemption is a bigger issue.)

I will also give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you. I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. Ezekiel 36:26

Sisu is a Finnish word whose meaning can be approximated by a combination of such concepts as stoicism and determined resistance.

Social Distancing

We are managing the situation.

Whenever people flow like water
through the holy interlocking boxes
of a stadium, emporium
or auditorium, their leaders
and role models must be seen among them
only briefly rubbing elbows –
never pressing hands – and passing on 
no more than they brought in with them.
They are all in this together.

As they stream through lobbies,
passages and concourses
from north and south not one of them 
may leave the way they entered.
All turnstile counters click in one direction
for the regular attenders;
any strangers, misfits
or occasional creatives
have to slip through gaps in calculation.

He who enters by the way of the north gate to worship shall go out by the way of the south gate; and he who enters by the way of the south gate shall go out by the way of the north gate. He shall not return by the way of the gate by which he came in, but shall go out straight before him.  Ezekiel 46:9,10

 
Identified Flying Objects

Sceptics guess that magic mushrooms helped
to open Heaven – or perception’s doors –
in Babylon  and show the awed and shocked 
Ezekiel some version of
the gyroscope and helicopter
in advance of L. da Vinci.

Ezekiel did not make sketches. He left
words instead of blueprints. Hence his engines,
while attracting less mechanical
analysis than Leonardo’s,
leave a lot more room for extra
terrestrial imaginings.

Some fantasists insist that aliens
can scrawl art deco doodles in our fields
and navigate the planet via ley lines.
Others say time-travellers
could show Ezekiel a future
three millennia ahead.

Perhaps he caught a glimpse of locust-gunships
stuttering across Iraqi deserts, 
stop-start – like the freeze-frame hovering
of hummingbirds he’d never known –
and bringing down much cruder forms
of shock and awe on Babylon.
 

The heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God… Out of its centre came the likeness of four living creatures. …There was one wheel on the earth beside the living creatures … Their appearance and their work was as it were a wheel within a wheel … When the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up.  Ezekiel 1:1-19

Some explain Ezekiel’s vision as a clairvoyant’s (or time-traveller’s) preview of modern – perhaps military – technology. Josef Blumrich (The Spaceships of Ezekiel (1974)) claims it describes a genuine extraterrestrial encounter of the kind reported in literature dedicated to phenomena like UFOs, ley lines and crop circles.