Rachel Spence, "Daughter of the Sun"

Rachel Spence lives in London, Ludlow and Venice. Her poems explore themes including time, absence, motherhood and water. She has published three pamphlets: Furies (Templar, 2016), Call & Response (Emma Press, 2020), and Uncalendared (Coast to Coast to Coast Journal Winner, 2023). Her debut collection Bird of Sorrow (Templar, 2018) was highly commended in the 2019 Forward Prize. Her prose poem "Venice Unclocked," in collaboration with photographer Giacomo Cosua, was published by Ivory Press in 2022. Her poetry has appeared widely, including in PN Review, The North, The London Magazine, 14 Magazine and Tears in the Fence. Her non-fiction book Battle for the Museum, which explores the relationship between art, power and money, was published by Hurst in 2024.

About Daughter of the Sun, by Rachel Spence
From the gentle rivers of Shropshire to the heat-baked seas of Greece, Daughter of the Sun radiates with mothers and tracks our orbits around them.

Split into two parts, a sonnet sequence recounts Spence’s time reconnecting with her estranged mother – caring for her through illness and grieving her passing – before a bold rewriting of the myths around Medea reimagines her not as a murderous witch but a child-free scientist ahead of her time.

With the power and salve of the natural world always close by, Daughter of the Sun contends with being a mother and a daughter, and also what it means to liberate ourselves of those identities and write our own myths full of freedom and possibility.

You can read more about Daughter of the Sun on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read a sample poem from the collection. 

From Daughter of the Sun

July 1976, your garden, midnightish.

Our worlds distilled to nothing save each other 

and this bewildering heat. I hear you

padding down the stairs – morphine trickle

of a mother’s footsteps – beg you to let me

stay while you find whisky, deckchairs.

The lawn is dry as a ship’s biscuit, but we are 

watered by the scent of your tobacco plants. 

My winter’s bone is being old enough to know 

I don’t know what you’re thinking. Not even 

when the owls come. Two, maybe three,

their beatless wings spellbound against

earth’s pull. Ten seconds we’ll remember

all our lives. We know it, even then. 

Angel T. Dionne, "Bird Ornaments"

 

Angel T. Dionne is an Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Moncton Edmundston campus. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Pretoria and is the founding editor of Vroom Lit Magazine. She is the author of a full-length collection of short fiction, Sardines (ClarionLit, 2023), and two chapbooks, Inanimate Objects (Bottlecap Press, 2022) and Mormyridae (LJMcD Communications, 2024). She is also the co-editor of Rape Culture 101: Programming Change (Demeter Press, 2020). Her full-length poetry collection, Bird Ornaments, is forthcoming with Broken Tribe Press in early 2025.

About Bird Ornaments, by Angel T. Dionne
Bird Ornaments is a seventy-five-page collection of short surrealist poems focusing on the irrational juxtaposition of unrelated elements. In these poems, words and images eschew rationality and coherence, allowing thoughts to move freely without censorship. Bird Ornaments uncovers the true function of thought and unearths the marvellous, which is often obscured by the rational mind. As André Breton said, surrealism is the "undirected play of thought," and that’s what Bird Ornaments captures.

In "Grandmother’s Geraniums," flowers bloom from a rocking chair, from an egg, and from a toe infected with gout. "City Living" paints an unsettling portrait of urbanity with its tethered birds and hopeless beggars, while "Bastard Equations" examines the sum of a mother’s regrets. All in all, Bird Ornaments is a haunting look at what it means to be human.

The publisher's website is here. Below, you can read two poems from the collection. 

From Bird Ornaments

Broken Silk

Which way did my neck bend 
           before it broke?
Did it grow crooked 
           with the weight of my silk?
Did it spin hot and gurgling 
          down my spine? 

I suck plump aphids
          from the audience’s crescendo.
In the open space, I evaporate,
          hanging there like a mosaic.

 
Borges Story

The roof leaks abandoned suspicions, 
and torn wood fragments
are lodged in the sunrise, 
paralyzing tomorrow’s breath.

 
My feet disintegrate 
into the daggered floors,
a signal 
for the jaded. 

A bear’s den of question marks 
and explanations 
is scrawled 
on the soles of my feet.

My legs have always been a Borges story – 
a garden of forking paths,
a book of sand, 
a library of babble,
burbling commitments. 

David Briggs, "The Odyssey Complex and Other Poems"

David Briggs has published four collections with Salt Publishing. The Method Men (2010) was shortlisted for the London Festival Poetry Prize, and Rain Rider (2013) was a winter selection of the Poetry Book Society. His third book, Cracked Skull Cinema (2019), was a Poetry Wales pick of the year. David received an Eric Gregory Award in 2002, and since then his work has appeared in a wide range of journals and anthologies from The Poetry Review to the generational anthology edited by Roddy Lumsden, Identity Parade (Bloodaxe, 2010). A teacher of English in Bristol since 2005, David founded and currently chairs the Writers' Examination Board, which offers the Apprentice of Fine Arts (AFA) in Creative Writing - a post-16 qualification that is currently live in twelve UK schools. David has been poet-in-residence at Bristol University, and from 2019-2023 he was co-editor of the Bristol-based poetry journal Raceme. In 2023 he completed his practice-based PhD research, The Odyssey Complex: Reading and Writing Midlife Poetics and Middle Style at the University of Exeter.

About The Odyssey Complex and Other Poems
David’s fourth collection, The Odyssey Complex and Other Stories (Salt, 2024), offers a midlife counterpart to the poetics of both youth and late style, exploring themes of family ties, nostalgia and retreat, ageing and mortality, acts of memorial and the impulse towards hospitality. 

You can read more about The Odyssey Complex and Other Poems on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read two sample poems from the collection. 

From The Odyssey Complex and Other Poems, by David Briggs

Cointreau

 
          in memoriam Avril Henry 
 
I love its boozy citrus hit,  
how in licking my lips post-sip  
it sharpens that extra-temporal bit  
of self that’s able to taste  
the past in the present,  
taste two moments co-eval 
in its sweetness. 
          And it puts me in mind of Avril 
placing a bottle of Harpic, and Marigolds,  
on the shelf to the side of her bathtub – 
ever considerate of others,  
of those who might find her  
many days after – 
and climbing in carefully  
in her best purple kaftan; 
diluting the poison  
in a brandy-glass measure  
of blood-orange Cointreau  
to smother its foulness.  
           And I like to imagine  
that she had a book, 
perhaps her translation  
of Guillaume de Deguileville’s  
Pilgrimage of the Life of the Manhode, 
from which I also imagine her  
reading aloud while Death inched closer, 
put one cold hand on her heart. 
          There’s just enough of the past 
swilling around in the present, 
like just enough barbiturate  
in a terminal glass of Cointreau;  
like there’s just enough barbiturate  
for the task, in a vial  
she’d hidden so presciently 
beneath floorboards,  
fearful of interventions, 
of untimely police raids,  
of cold-calling journalists.  
She taught me so much I’m grateful to know. 
           Each year, on this day,  
I pour for myself 
a chilled, double rocks glass  
           of Cointreau. 

Living with the Douglasses
  
Michael Douglas is renting our spare room 
again. It’s just temporary, till work picks up  
 
and/or Catherine takes him back.  
He’s an early riser, and on bright mornings  
 
we’ll find him out in the garden with  
black coffee and a Thai stick, looking  
 
so much like Sandy Kominsky/Grady Tripp  
we wonder how much acting was involved  
 
in these recent projects. But it’s still work I rate –  
notwithstanding the acclaimed roles he played  
 
in the 80s and 90s – since it feels  
as though he’s comfortable enough now  
 
in his accomplishments to take himself 
a little less seriously; as though he no longer needs  
 
some Nietzschean hero narrative to flatter  
an entitled sense of celebrity and is enjoying  
 
the opportunity to play gently botched characters  
with the (often unfulfilled) potential for redemption.  
 
As though he’s embraced his inner clown.  
Sometimes, I wonder if it really is Michael Douglas  
 
who’s living with us, and my wife’ll say, “Well,  
if he’s not Michael Douglas then who the hell is he?”  
 
And I’ll laugh and say: “You’re right. I’m ridiculous.  
Of course he’s Michael Douglas,” before knocking  
 
to see if he wants a cup of joe. I like the way  
he’s arranged his flamboyant neck scarves  
 
on his tailor’s dummy and, sometimes, I think  
Should I grow my hair out like Michael Douglas?  

Whenever I encounter a crisis of self-doubt,  
I’ll give myself a pep talk, saying things like 
 
“Michael Douglas may be going through  
a tough patch right now, but he’s got chutzpah 
 
and is a pretty good style model for the older man.” 
But then I’ll recall that much of his swagger,  
 
the élan that enables him to carry off that look, 
comes from years of Hollywood stardom  
 
and a foot-locker of great anecdotes featuring  
some of the world’s most glamorous people.  
 
And I’ll realise with a sigh that my three books  
with a small press and that time I shared the bill  
 
with Don Paterson don’t really compare,  
that I’m probably kidding myself.  
 
But then I say: “Fuck it. I’m Spartacus!” And laugh.  
And my wife says, “That was Kirk Douglas, knucklehead.” 

Resources and Opportunities in the Media

 

Last Thursday, students on the final-year undergraduate Creative Writing module "Writing Voices," along with students from the MA in Creative Writing, visited the BBC in Leicester, and were kindly given a tour and talk by Executive Producer Hannah Meredith. During the talk, Hannah recommended the following websites as useful resources for anyone interested in pursuing careers in the BBC and the media in general:

Early careers @BBCGetIn available here. 

Training and development @BBCAcademy available here. 

Channel 4 careers and skills @Channel4Skills available here. 

Jobs and opportunities @MediaBeans available here. 

Advice, mentoring and coaching for media jobs @TheMediaMentor available here. 

BBC Writers resources available here. 

You can also find more useful websites and resources for writers on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Bert Flitcroft, "Seeing the Light"

 

Bert Flitcroft was born and brought up in Lancashire but now lives in the Midlands. He has three collections of poetry already published: Singing Puccini at the Kitchen Sink, Thought-Apples and Just Asking. His work has appeared in a number of national magazines. He is a prize-winning poet, has been Poet in Residence at the Southwell Poetry Festival and has performed at a number of national festivals including The Edinburgh International Book Festival. He was Staffordshire Poet Laureate 2015–17 and curated the on-line Staffordshire Poetry Collection. He has worked as resident poet with one of our "National Treasures," The Wedgwood Collection at the V&A; as resident poet with the prestigious R.I.B.A exhibition "The Road Less Travelled"; and recently as part of the University of Keele project "Labelling the Museum." He offers a professional mentoring service and has a long and successful history of running workshops and giving readings, not just to local poetry groups but in libraries, arts centres, gardens, galleries museums. His website is here. 

 

About Seeing the Light, by Bert Flitcroft

This book works as a collection from youth through to old age and all points between, recording moments and incidents when life and the world are suddenly seen afresh and with a greater understanding - Seeing the Light metaphorically as well as (occasionally) physically. It contains both serious poems alongside a few light-hearted ones which I hope will raise a smile or two. 

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

From Seeing the Light

Headland

It's a strolling stroll along the rise and fall

of the rolling face of the thrusting cliffs

where well-fed seagulls squabble and swoop

and the Skua threatens to skua its prey

to the mounted weathered whalebone skull

longing out to its long-lost sculling kin

in their deep and wail and the score 

of their song and wave of the waves

to the gap and the cleft where the rock

stands proud defying the rock-and-roll

and the jiving swell of the surging sea

when the winter wind cuts colder than stone

and whistles its wildness and scorns

the clouds that scud and slide down

the black and blue and blustering sky

that roughs up foam-frothed crashing wet

in the caves at the shearing feet of the sheer

rock with its tufted pate speckled with nests

and gaping and gasping and desperate beaks

in the biting squalls of summer storms

and the screech and the swooping turn of the tern

with its stay-away warning scream and dive

that mean what they say to make children scamper

and adults scram from the peck and prick

the stinging cut and rip of razor-blade beaks 

the thump and grip of curled and angry claws 

on windmilling arms and paper-thin skin

from these fearsome sprites of the wild wild.

Bridges

 

This is my uncle Albert - all ginger hair 

and ears like saucers, that cheeky smile

as if he’s pinched the last chocolate biscuit.

"Not a bad bone in his body," I’m told.

"Wouldn't hurt a fly." This was before the war,

before the children he would never have.

 

Killed he was, parachuting in at Arnhem.

A bridge too far for him, he came down 

with a hole in his back the size of my fist.

This was taken outside the mill gates 

on Crimea street. Nineteen he was. A hero.

I bear his name and carry it with pride.

 

My oldest daughter’s settled now, at home

with the kids, with the steep green hill

and dots of sheep behind. She has his smile,

that hint of mischief. And that ginger hair

that’s crossed a generation.

In the end some bridges build themselves.

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.