I was interviewed by Andy N for his Spoken Label podcast. We discussed writing, and Afterwards. Here’s the link! https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1AUKWSUhya/

https://amzn.eu/d/4FtS8UM

I’m currently trying to navigate the bemusing world of self promotion, for Afterwards. It’s quite alien to me – I’ve never been particularly comfortable promoting my own work.

Reviews are important, I’ve found – the more you have the better (something to do with algorithms I suppose). So I’ve been asking everyone I know who has read it to leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads. I still only have a handful, but it’s slowly growing.

I don’t want to be that annoying person who shoehorns an ad for my book into every conversation or social media post. So that’s last resort territory. I have faith in the story and I know that if I can get it out there people will enjoy it. It’s figuring out how to do it that’s tricky.

It seems hard to get your book noticed when you don’t have the advantage of a large corporate marketing team etc. I’ll figure it out, in my own way.

The space you used to fill crowds me with

its silence.  The rooms, so full of who you were,

so empty without you.  I can’t bring myself

to clear them.  Your things are objects now,

to be taken to charity shops where they’ll sit

anonymously on shelves, to be looked at by strangers,

no more wrapped in tender memories.   

Can I sit in your home a little longer

before it becomes just a house?

Can I look at the ornaments you

picked out and feel that you’re still here

before the clearing out of your life for good?

October arrives gently, leading me into autumn

with pale mornings and colder air. A scarf of fog ribbons

along the canal. The water reflects white, white.

It’s OK, the trees are telling me.  It’s OK.

We know you’re hurting.  We see your pain, hanging

sharp above you like spikes on hawthorn.  You can

feel what you feel.  But while you wear your grief,

while you wrap it around yourself, you might look too

at the shaking of berries on the path – red

and orange like the wide star of a maple leaf.

You can allow yourself a moment of wonder

at the gathering of enormous scarlet toadstools

in the woods.  It’s like fairyland a man says to me,

having been enough surprised to dismount his bike. 

The skies are grey, certainly, and there’s a chill

in the air.  The colours of autumn won’t change

the fact of her death, and everything won’t be alright.

But the trees will still shed their red and their gold,

and they will stand bare against winter frost, as

they do every year.  It isn’t necessary to take a

lesson from this.  It’s enough just to be here

on this cold morning; awake, alone, alive.

Well, my body has got the better of me and I’ve stopped writing a poem a day. I’m just too exhausted to be creative. I’m saving the prompts I like for use at another time, hopefully.

Poetry for me is about joy and about creating something interesting or beautiful that didn’t exist before, and I can’t do that when I’m in an ME flare, as I seem to be right now. Such is life!

The next in my ‘bad girls’ series – this is a character from The Matrix. In the film, Mouse creates her as a distraction in his training programme. She’s been constructed by a man as both an idealised version of femininity and a trap – in fact she isn’t really a woman at all – but we’ll allow it.

Her beauty is deliberate –

she’s been devised as someone’s

ideal woman.  Distracting,

but that’s the point.  She’s a shock –

a rupture in the black-suited world.

Her lips are deep ruby with the

start of a smile directed at

only you.  You are impelled to stare –

your gaze is invited.  Her dress

too is a rich claret – spilled red

wine. Your eyes are pulled to

her body and held there. 

Even as you stare, you

know that she’s a trap. 

Something about the

red recalls blood – an open wound. 

She’s a warning, an exclamation mark.

A premonition. 

But ultimately she’s a shell –

weaponised femininity – to be

gazed at and feared equally.

Don’t look for too long.  She may

not be what she seems.  Don’t get pulled in

or the trap may spring.