Violets in our garden in May. Planted a few years ago from @jackiewillsbooks John Clare’s poem ‘March Violets’ starts: ‘Where last year’s leaves and weeds decay/ March violets are in blow,/ I’d rake the rubbish all away/ And give them room to grow.’ #violet #garden #spring #flowerstagram #poetry
There are a few places left on my @poetrybusiness online workshop ‘Celebrating the Self’ on Tuesday 12th May at 11am. We’ll be looking at poems by Walt Whitman, Sharon Olds and @jerichobrown1 and drafting poems. There are concessions and a bursary/free place is still available for writers on a low income. Details on the Poetry Business website #poetrycommunity #poetrywriting #onlineworkshop #poetryworkshop #writingpoetry
An inspiring quote from Toni Morrison in @parisreview I feel I’ve always written from the margins. It’s a good place to be. #tonimorrison #writersofinstagram #writingcommunity #blackwriters #writing
Yesterday we walked through @bluebellwalk in Arlington, which we try to do every spring. Here’s the opening lines from my sonnet Bluebells: ‘Follow me inside the hidden wood,/ taking us both down a narrow path/ printed by boot-soles. This haven holds our breath’ #bluebells #bluebellseason #bluebellwoods #bluebellwalk #spring
The poems in ‘Crowd Voltage’ (@bloodaxebooks 2026) by @mrjohnmccullough are as exhilarating as the book’s cover. McCullough has a way with luscious phrase-making and interrogating his subjects of the crowd, a paradoxical search for community and solitude, how the world and body he inhabits are both entrancing and bewildering. The collection is divided into two parts: the fizz and excitement of ‘The Body of the Crowd’ and the quieter contemplations of ‘The Crowd of the Body.’ The poem ‘Song of the West Pier’ opens ‘And when your face falls off,/ keep stumbling.’ Highly recommended. #poetry #queerpoetry #poetrycollection #queerpoet #reading
A reminder that I’ll be running another @poetrybusiness online workshop ‘My Excellent Body: Celebrating the Self’ on Tuesday 12th May at 11am. All welcome. Details and booking on the Poetry Business website #onlineworkshop #onlineworkshops #poetry #writingpoetry #writingpoems
‘Bather throwing ball’ (1930s) photograph by Keith Vaughan on Pagham beach. Vaughan’s pre-war photographs of young men playing on the beach were important to him, often informing the imagery in his paintings and drawings @paghambeach@keithvaughanofficial #keithvaughan #photography #queerart #queerartist #photographer
I’ve spent the last few weeks reading ‘Letters of Ted Hughes’ (@faberbooks 2007) edited by Christopher Reid. The letters are wise, generous, honest - a pleasure to read. He’s always illuminating about Plath, with a dozen or more tender love letters. On publishing ‘Birthday Letters’ in the year he died, he wrote to his son Nicholas in February 1998: ‘What I was needing to do, all those years, was deal with what had happened to your mother and me. That was the big unmanageable event in my life, that had somehow to be managed - internally - by me. Somehow through my writing - because that’s the method I’ve developed to deal with myself.’ #tedhughes #letters #books #bookreview #poetry
