Pam Thompson, "Sub/urban Legends"

 

Pam Thompson is a writer, educator and reviewer based in Leicester. She has been widely published in magazines including Atrium, Butcher’s Dog, Finished Creatures,The Alchemy Spoon, The High Window, Ink, Sweat & Tears, The North, The Rialto, Magma and Mslexia.  Pam’s last collection, Strange Fashion, was published by Pindrop Press in 2017. A pamphlet, Sub/urban Legends has just been published Paper Swans Press (March 2025). Pam is a Hawthornden Fellow.

About Sub/urban Legends, by Pam Thompson
These poems cross and re-cross boundaries between the real and surreal and take imaginative leaps in form and subject matter. The New York School poets are presiding spirits and Eduard Munch puts in an appearance in a Welsh town. The poems don’t shy away from the darker side of life: loss, grief, mental illness, but there is joy and exuberance and hope. 

You can read more about Sub/urban Legends on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read two poems from the collection. 

From Sub/urban Legends

In New York City with my daughter

Outside the Whitney, a man sells red roses.

Mother’s Day. Inside, Berdie, Larry Rivers’ mother-in-law

is naked, twice. Every wrinkle and fold. After she died

O’Hara wrote, ‘Berdie, Berdie, where are you

and why?’ Schuyler loved her too.

On Brooklyn Bridge a cyclist shouts at a woman

who has wandered across his lane.

I turn to catch the views Georgia painted, read messages 

on love-locks chained to the rails, ‘I love you

Jay, Carina, Kim.’ Black heart drawn with a Sharpie.

Times Square—two living-statues of Liberty,

bickering through green rubber masks. Rap 

boys pull out stooges from Asia, Australia, the UK—

all brag and swagger, leap over them. Our cameras

OD on light—we lose our bearings, just by looking up.

The Glass Strawberry 

My friend sent his boyfriend a single rose for Valentine’s Day.

It arrived with its head cut off. His boyfriend bought 

him three cacti and put them on a fold-up table

which collapsed which is bizarre because it reminds me

of my daughter’s early Christmas present: three small cacti,

packed flat and posted, wearing woolly hats and scarves.

My cacti lean together in the kitchen window.

My friend sends people care-packages when they’re ill.

I told him I’d read about ‘strawberries,’ little treats 

we should give ourselves when we’re sad, sitting in the sun, 

or stroking a cat, to boost our endorphins.

A homeless man he worked with called them ‘dolphins.’ 

My friend sent me a glass strawberry that’s cool

and slightly spiky. I like to hold it but the glass heart 

with severed arteries stays in its red satin box. 

We have both been in the desert for ages 

but our cacti have pink flowers, are taller than us 

and hold out their arms. And the dolphins leap and leap.

Nearly Easter News 2025

It's been a while since our last News post, and lots has been happening in the last few months in the Centre for New Writing, so here is an update on student and staff news at Leicester. Congratulations and thanks to everyone who helps make this such a vibrant place to be! You can read our previous News article, from November 2024, here. 

News

Firstly, congratulations to all the MA Creative Writing students and MA Modern and Contemporary Literature and Creative Writing students who graduated in January 2025!

Congratulations to everyone involved in the hugely successful Literary Leicester Festival, 19th to the 22nd March 2025. It was an amazing celebration of literature, with lots of different events and authors. Special congratulations here to all the students involved in this year's Creative Writing Student Showcase, who made it such a brilliant event. Speakers included Sonya Hundal, Anna Walsh, Joe Bedford, Aidan Trulove, Laura Besley, Olivia Peachey, Kimaya Patil, Cate Morris, Shauna Strathmann, Daneil Hibberd, Nina Walker, Aarini Mehta, Sandra Shaji, Dave Clarke. 

There have also been lots of wonderful Centre for New Writing events this term with visiting authors and writing professionals. You can read about this term's guest masterclasses and workshops here. There are still more to come after Easter, including a public masterclass by Kit de Waal on Tuesday 13 May (see details here), a talk by author Sophie Haydock on 30 April (see details here), and the Annual Creative Writing Lecture, this year given by Eimear McBride on 6 May (see details here). 

Everybody's Reviewing, our review blog, has now had over 500,000 readers, and Creative Writing at Leicester has now had 350,000 readers! Thanks to all our authors, editors, students, reviewers, bloggers and readers. If you've not done so already, do have a look at our "Favourite Reads of 2024" round-up on Everybody's Reviewing here.  

Rosalind Adam, MA Creative Writing graduate, has had her poem "Decomissioned" published in Amethyst Review here. 

Kirsten Arcadio has reviewed Android Author by Sapphira Olson on Everybody's Reviewing here. Kirsten has now completed her PhD - congratulations! 

Congratulations to PhD Creative Writing student Laura Besley, who was named as a Top Tier Finalist in the Globe Soup Open Short Story Competition 2024. You can see more details here. She also won Second Prize in the Cranked Anvil Flash Fiction Competition. You can read her prize-winning story, "Perhaps on a Summer's Day," here. Her story "Like a Memory or Maybe Only a Dream" was shortlisted for the Mini Welkin Writing Prize. You can read it here. Laura's story "That meeting point where something is as close as it is far away" was runner-up in the Flash Fiction Festival Online Competition. You can read it here. Laura's story "When We Were Raucous" has been published by The Manchester Review here. 

Congratulations to New Walk Editions, which is co-directed by Nick Everett, and which was shortlisted for this year's Michael Marks Awards for poetry pamphlet publishers!

MA Creative Writing graduate Tracey Foster has reviewed The Path of Peace: Walking the Western Front Way by Anthony Seldon for Everybody's Reviewing here, and Fewer Better Things by Glenn Adamson here. Tracey's haiku was longlisted for the Haiku Foundation's competition on the theme of dreams. You can read her haiku and other longlisted entries here. 

Kim Wiltshire has reviewed The Granite Kingdom by PhD graduate Tim Hannigan on Everybody's Reviewing here. 

Kathy Hoyle, PhD Creative Writing student, has stories published in both the Northern Gravy Children's and Young Readers' Anthology and the Northern Gravy Fiction Anthology. Her story "Cockleshell Girl" has been nominated by South Florida Poetry Journal for Best Small Fiction 2024. Kathy's story "Humbug Shark" is published by Does It Have Pockets? here. Kathy's story "Gallows Pole" has also been nominated for Best Microfiction by New Flash Fiction Review. In March, Kathy chaired a discussion at Sunderland Museum with author Louise Powell about oral history and poetry. You can read more about this discussion here. Kathy has interviewed Louise Powell for Everybody's Reviewing here. 

BA Journalism student Saskia Kabongo undertook work experience on Everybody's Reviewing for a couple of weeks in February. She interviewed authors Lisa Bent and Rasheda Ashanti Malcolm for the site, and reviewed Loveless by Alice Osman here, Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid here, and Me Before You by Jojo Moyes here. Congratulations and thanks to Saskia! 

Congratulations to Amirah Mohiddin, who passed her viva for her PhD in Creative Writing in November. You can read more about Amirah's PhD project on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Congratulations to Creative Writing graduate Hannah Mitchell, whose essay "Three" has been published on The Audacity here.

Anna O'Sullivan, MA Modern and Contemporary Literature and Creative Writing graduate, has written about her MA Dissertation in Creative Writing here. 

Congratulations to PhD Creative Writing student Cathi Rae, who passed her viva in December! Congratulations too for the re-publication of her poetry collection, Your Cleaner Hates You, by Coalville C.A.N. You can read more about the collection here. One of the directors of the publisher is MA Creative Writing graduate Constantine. 

Sally Shaw has reviewed Red Runs the Witch's Thread by Victoria Williamson for Everybody's Reviewing here. 

Extracts from Jonathan Taylor's memoir, A Physical Education: On Bullying, Discipline & Other Lessons, have been published on MIT's Press Reader here.  His article "Ten Things I Wish I'd Known About Bullying" is in the Morning Star here. His article for the charity Kidscape, "Bullying Is ...", is published here. 

PhD Creative Writing student Jane Simmons has four poems featured in the new anthology Lincolnshire Folk Tales Reimagined, ed. Anne Milon and Rory Waterman (Five Leaves, 2025).

PhD student Nina Walker has written about Amateur Hour's second zine and her experience of workshopping with this group of graduates and students on Creative Writing at Leicester here.  

Anna Walsh, MA Creative Writing student, has written about the regular Leicester event "Rough Draft" on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Congratulations to Harry Whitehead, whose novel White Road will be published by Claret Press in September 2025! You can read more about it here. On the 22nd April 2025, Harry will be reading from his novel and talking to Kevan Manwaring as part of the "Writing the Earth" online event hosted by Bournemouth Arts University. You can sign up for this free event here. 

PhD Creative Writing student Lee Wright has reviewed Father's Father's Father by Dane Holt on Everybody's Reviewing here, The Viaduct by David Wheldon here, and Two Sisters by Blake Morrison here. His personal essay, "Old Oslo," is published by Cigarette Fire Literary Magazine here.