josephine corcoran – Robin Houghton

Blog/ 15/05/202315/05/2023

Launches, project updates and two disputed works

The poor weather has meant I’ve not been spending time in the garden as I normally would at this time of year. Still too cold to plant out courgettes and tomatoes! So instead I’ve been keeping myself out of mischief with ‘deskwork’…

A poet friend whose website I created a few years ago has asked for a revamp, so I’m enjoying working on that. I’ve also got two Planet Poetry interview recordings coming up soon, so I’ve been reading and preparing for those.

Meanwhile despite days off and other distractions, I have kept to my ‘average 1,000 words a day’ on my novel and am past the 60k mark already, so the end-of-May (self-imposed) deadline for finishing the first draft is well in sight. Alongside this I’m researching agents and planning my strategy! I have no idea of a title for this book yet, but I’m looking forward to giving it some thought.

There seem to be plenty of launches and other events coming up. I just read today about Josephine Corcoran’s new pamphlet from Live Canon, to be launched on May 21st. Tomorrow Jill Abram’s launch for her debut pamphlet from Broken Sleep is happening in London – I had booked to go along, but then was offered the chance to talk about Planet Poetry to 3rd year students at Brighton University at their end of year publishing course. Peter and I couldn’t resist the idea of being on a panel and talking about the podcast! Thanks to Lou Tondeur for the invitation. On June 2nd I’m delighted to be reading at Frogmore at 40, Frogmore Press’s 40th Anniversary event in Brighton. I’m a tad daunted to be honest, looking at the names of the other readers. So I just hope I’m not reading first. Please come if you’re anywhere near Brighton, it should be a grand night!

The Charleston Festival is coming up (no, I haven’t been invited to read there!) and as usual I’ll be going to a few talks with my good non-poet-but-writer friend Caroline. On May 26th the amazingly talented and lurrvly Inua Ellams is reading. I loved interviewing him on the Planet Poetry podcast and can’t wait to see how he goes down with the Bloomsbury set.

A couple of weeks ago we were in Stratford upon Avon to see a performance of Cymbelline. I’d never seen it before and nobody I’d spoken to about it had seen it either. Turns out it is a disputed play (ie some say it’s not actually by Shakespeare) – it is certainly a bit of a mashup of other Shakespeare plays both in plot and plot devices. Postmodern, eh? A bit like that song that just won the Eurovision Song Contest sounding suspiciously like ‘Winner takes it all’ by ABBA – is it a conspiracy to get the contest back in Sweden next year for the 50th anniversary of ABBA’s win? Anyway, whoever wrote it (Cymbelline that is) we enjoyed it! (But personally I preferred the Austrian entry about Edgar Allen Poe…)

Blog/ 19/12/201919/12/2019

Ah! The business of poetry blogging

Oh no!

It’s been a few weeks since my last post, and yet Matthew Stewart has still generously kept me on his list of ‘Best UK Poetry Blogs of 2019’. Matthew observes that 2019 was ‘far from being a vintage year’ for blogging, and his suggestions of why this might be are interesting: keeping a blog going can be a chore at times, once you stop it’s hard to get going again, sometimes you can’t help wondering if you’re writing into a vacuum.

I’d rather be bog-snorkelling bragging blogging

In some ways, writing this blog is no more of a chore than writing actual poems, in that I prefer not to force either of them, but to let them happen when the inclination hits me. Having said that, I know it’s not good to leave a blog hanging for too long. I do from time to time give myself a goal, such as ‘write a blog post a week’ or ‘start a poem a day for a month’. I haven’t done either of those for a while, but I’ve been gee’d on by others lately. Heather Walker has been blogging every day recently and it’s been fascinating to read. Josephine Corcoran shared recently that she’d written twenty new poems. Lordy! That’s probably my annual output. And Mat Riches has been blogging every week for some time, AND he sent out 161 poems this year – BLIMEY.

Coming soon – the stats of shame

Actually Mat’s post reminded me that my annual roundup of subs/rejections/acceptances is due. I doubt I’ll be offering any natty graphs. Somewhat a visual feels like it might be a detail too far. But hey! Let’s see…

I do know that even if I’m not blogging, I’m reading other people’s blogs. They come at my inbox every Monday morning and I never cease to be amazed at how much thought, energy, creativity and generosity goes into blogs. And with the boot on the other foot, I’m eternally grateful to my readers, aka YOU, for taking the time to read this.

Current reading list

My poetry books-to-read pile currently includes the Winter issues of Rattle and The Moth, Clarissa Aykroyd’s Island of Towers (Broken Sleep Books), Hubert Moore’s The Feeding Station (Shoestring) which I’m reviewing for The Frogmore Papers, Katie Griffiths’ My Shrink Is Pregnant (one of my fellow Live Canon Pamphleteers) and Robert Hamberger’s Blue Wallpaper (Waterloo). Recently I received a copy of Sarah Windebank’s super first collection, Memories of a Swedish Grandmother (Myriad Editions). I was lucky enough to get a review copy, and wrote a short testimonial for the book.

And so this is Christmas…

I only got 6 out of 18 in the Guardian’s Christmas Number Ones quiz – although I think it was a swizz as there were only one or two questions about the seventies! Come on, Christmas was invented in the 70s! Can you do better??

Blog/ 23/09/2019

And from this cluttered desk

I admit it – I’m very nosy about other people’s workspaces. Writers and artists especially. So I loved Josephine Corcoran’s recent post about her ‘cluttered desk’ – although I thought it looked pretty good actually.

My first instinct was of course to compare it to mine, so I reached for the camera – but before tidying up. Monday is usually my day for clearing the desk and starting afresh, so this is the gritty reality of the pre-clean-up. Josphine’s desk seems to be in a lovely light, airy place, whereas mine is a darkish corner where I’m flanked by bookshelves, a chest of drawers, a tall filing cabinet and a printer. But it’s cosy though, and nobody can come up behind me 🙂

There are actually two desks. The main one with the nice big screen and the standing desk with the laptop. Here goes – with Josephine’s post still open on my screen which shows how I leapt up to take a photo!

Robin's desk

You may be wondering about some of the items here… the Brownie Badge Book (I’m a volunteer Bownie helper, so just doing a bit of record-keeping for the Unit) and the empty toilet roll (I’m learning knots at the moment and one of them calls for a tube … don’t ask!) And two pairs of glasses may seem greedy but hey. Believe it or not there is some legitimate work stuff in that pile of papers. I’ve always had a big screen desktop comp as I used to do a lot of graphics and website stuff. Although I do less of that now, I like writing at the big screen and seeing words unfold there. I don’t do any writing longhand.

As it happens, the standing desk is currently my poetry desk, and I’d like to say it’s tidier, but…

Robin's other desk

Somewhere in there is a renewal notice from the PBS, a copy of The Author, poetry collections by Stephen Sexton and Jericho Brown, a copy of Dante’s Inferno which I’m reading in English and Italian (a good way of stretching my vocabulary!) a couple of notebooks and a copy of ‘101 Things to Do in a Shed’ which is brilliant and altogether 101% distracting. All that’s missing is a half-drunk can of Diet Coke (it was too early in the morning) and Bobby, the black cat who likes to block the screen and nudge my mouse hand when I’m trying to type (like now!) In fact I think it’s time for a little yoga (Bobby likes to join in, and he does a fine Downward Dog).

So thanks Josephine for the idea. I’d love to see some more of these ‘my workspace’ posts. Like I said, I’m a tad nosy!

Blog/ 26/11/2018

Kay Syrad, Josephine Corcoran – short reviews

Inland - Kay Syrad and What Are You After? - Josephine Corcoran

A couple of brief reviews of collections I’ve been reading:

Inland – Kay Syrad (Cinnamon, 2018) (£8.99)

There’s nothing predictable or familiar in this collection. Just when you feel you’re getting your feet under the table suddenly the table is gone, and the ground beneath, and your feet too. Just two poems in we encounter ‘Transcript’, a testimony with gestures-as-stage-directions which is stranger than the sum of its parts – a characteristic we meet intermittently throughout the book. The poet’s feeling for moss is visited and revisited, from ‘Nomenclature’ (‘bird’s -claw beard-moss / oblique-mouthed beardless-moss’) which ends with the line ‘ah – our fresh fingertips’ through to the last poem ‘Listening to moss’ (‘I take a blindfold, lie down and listen/ to a half-globe of star-green star-moss’). I came away with a sense of yearning, of sadness for something almost grasped but not entirely, almost said but not exactly (‘Situation of Secrecy’, ‘Scatter my bright feathered heart’, ‘Plaint’). The title poem ‘Inland’ takes the reader on a meditation around a few repeated words (gulls, grief, words, speak, heart, ship, inland) coming together and knocking against each other slowly towards a conclusion ‘gulls and men / follow the white island of the heart / all inlaid in the heart / grief in the heart / in white / I find white in the heart / inlaid’. I particularly loved Kay’s poem titles – more often than not intriguing, inventive and quirky. I also warmed to the more surreal poems, maybe because I enjoyed the fun of decoding them (or just scratching my head), much as the poet ‘translates’ a ‘secret message on a long fence’ in ‘Afternoon out’, but it’s also the magical mystery that Kay creates, sometimes as delicate as gossamer – you almost don’t want to pick it up for fear of breaking the magic.

What are you after? – Josephine Corcoran (Nine Arches, 2018) (£9.99)

Josephine Corcoran’s first collection draws upon memories (real, imagined or reimagined) to examine issues of identity, class, family and love. From the grief of miscarriage to a relationship mapped onto a litany of medical interventions (‘In 24 years, we’ve lost count / of all the body parts we’ve seen’ – ‘Love in the time of hospital visits’) the autobiographical content has an quiet honesty. Josephine situates the reader through her use of time-specific references, figures of speech period detail, popular culture and current affairs – the ‘5 o’clock bus’ from school, headrests ‘dimpled from Brylcreemed heads’. Stephen Lawrence, food banks and drones rub along with references to margarine, economy ham and the Three Degrees. Movie scenes and film references proliferate, as do dreams. The poet demonstrates great versatility and range, from the polemic of poems such as “Police Say Sorry” to the quieter lyric pieces and a wonderful pantoum ‘Fallen asleep by a Christmas Tree on New Year’s Eve’. Another trope weaving its way throughout is telephones and phone calls, featuring often as signifiers for communication (or lack of), misunderstanding, cross purposes and the gulfs between different times, ages, cultures and beliefs. Poems have been carefully sequenced, cross-referencing each other neatly. It makes sense, but if anything, I would quite have liked fewer instances of poems obviously following on from the previous one, for example ‘Gavrilo’ following ‘History Lesson’ – to makes things a bit more oblique for the reader. A very small quibble. One of my favourite poems in the collection, ‘In town for a funeral, we drive past our old house and see it is for sale’ is also possibly the longest. It’s a seemingly-simple but complex poem that invites many re-readings, yet still has plenty of secrets to give up. I can imagine Josephine might be already writing more of these longer poems. Watch out for the next collection.

I was fortunate to hear Josephine reading at Swindon Poetry Festival recently. Here is ‘Exquisite Corpse’:

Angst/ 24/11/2016

Poetry vs DIY, plus a few upcoming deadlines

It’s easy to lose the rhythm of blogging – I’ve been lacking the motivation lately, partly out of a feeling of ‘what is there really to say that makes a difference?’ And yet, there are always interesting things to say.

I’ve recently been admiring Josephine Corcoran’s commitment to blogging every day during November – sometimes in-depth pieces and other times brief updates or musings. It’s all interesting. Similarly, one of my all-time favourite blogs is Jean Tubridy’s Social Bridge – impossible to classify in terms of its content, and always compelling.

So what’s on my mind at the moment? Firstly, an increasing need to stay away from Facebook, TV news, the media generally. Is that an age thing – when nothing under the sun really seems new, or if it is, it often seems inconsequential? Perhaps also a ‘winter’s-coming-and-the-days-are-getting-shorter thing?

Secondly, we’re approaching our first winter in our new home and the to-do list is as long as ever. It’s such an absorbing project that sometimes I’d just rather strip down a window sill or paint a door, than put pen to paper!

And thirdly … quite a few poetry thangs coming up in terms of events, deadlines etc:

The Rialto’s first poetry pamphlet comp closes on November 30th – I did imagine I would enter, but my pamphlet offering(s) are in horrible disarray at the moment, so not good timing for me. But you should go for it! Fee is £22 (or £16 for Rialto subscribers) and Hannah Lowe will pick the winners from a shortlist of 50.

The Cinnamon Debut Poetry Collection prize also closes at the end of the month, costs £12 to enter.

Other imminent comp closings, in case you’re feeling lucky – Cafe Writers Poetry Competition, judged by Andrew McMillan with no sifters – closes November 30th. Fee is £4 per poem or £10 for three, and there’s an extra prize for the funniest poem, which makes a refreshing change!

In events news, this coming Monday 28th November I’ll be reading a poem at Anne-Marie Fyfe’s Coffee-House Poetry at The Troubadour, along with a number of other contributors to Live Canon’s 154 Anthology. The second half (main event) features Luke Kennard, Martina Evans and more. Should be a fantastic night.

It looks like there’ll be a block of Telltale poets in the audience at the T S Eliot award readings on January 15th at the Festival Hall in London. Hurrah! I always love the atmosphere at this event, and the chance to hear so many fine poets all in one sitting. Only downside is that getting home is always a MARE and who knows what skeletal service Southern Rail may be operating by then.

Oh, and I’ve given myself a deadline of the end of this month to finally finish finalising (!) the second ‘all about Twitter’ ebook, which now needs some rewrites having left it 6 months, and I need to get it out before Twitter pops its clogs.

Now, back to some paint-stripping – oh no, silly me, it’s dark … and what’s more our boiler has just packed up, so this evening I’ll be under a duvet on the sofa with a hot water bottle. Possibly rummaging through my pamphlet poems again …

Angst/ 02/06/2015

An update on submissions, readings etc and a nail-biting aside

My fingernails are looking reasonable at the moment, which is pretty good considering that the house-moving stressometer is probably at its highest right now.

A short aside about nailbiting – a bit off-topic and do not read if you are squeamish

I can usually tell if I’ve got too much on my mind by the state of my fingers. Too much biting is part of a perpetual cycle of worry – unconscious biting (for comfort) – feelings of self-loathing (because it’s so horrible a habit) – self-congratulations (when the fingers grow back) – worrying if there’s something I should be worrying about, etc. Of course, sometimes the different stages last for ages, so I can go for a while without a crisis. It’s a lifetime sentence with which finger/nailbiters will probably identify, but leaves non-biters mystified and often somewhat repulsed. I can trace it back to childhood when it was never (and probably still isn’t) regarded as self-harming. I wonder if that’s because it’s politely called ‘nailbiting’ although for many of us it’s much worse than that. I can safely say I don’t do it for attention. I’ve had hypnotherapy on more than one occasion and that is the only thing that stops it – albeit for a certain period of time. But a single session has lasted me nearly two years in the past. Chronic nail or finger biters – I recommend it HIGHLY.

OK, back to the business of poetry … I seem to be having a good few days as regards writing. The recent results of the Cinnamon pamphlet competition – (reader, I flunked it) – have prompted me to look again at my submission and identify the weak links. And – joyous! – I see several. So. Looking again at some poems unattended for 6 months or more has sent me into a frenzy of revising and re-writing. I have sent out more of the individual poems. I am hoping an experienced poet will help me sharpen up the pamphlet, ready for the next submission. I’m feeling positive that many of the poems therein have merit, and I’m starting to understand what edits are needed. Good times!

Submissions latest – since my last blog post on the subject I’ve heard from one of the long unheard-from mags, to say that my poems had been sent to a mystery file …? But were now winging their way to the selector for some unspecified future sifting of submissions. How magazines work is entirely a mystery to me but soon the boot will be on the Other Foot! My time as a selector for South magazine is nigh. Together with (and guided by the superior experience of) Jeremy Page of The Frogmore Papers, I will soon be reading and selecting submissions. Stay tuned for how this pans out.

Readings – last week I was very pleased to be at Redroaster in Brighton to hear readings from D A Prince, Deborah Tyler-Bennet and Andie Davidson. Andie is a Brighton Poetry Stanza cohort and one of my ‘loose committee’ of organisers, as well as a super poet and excellent in a workshop. Sadly I was soooo tired I was too dead on my feet to really get into the atmosphere or do any chatting, in fact it was lucky I wasn’t driving home as I think I fell asleep before we reached the car.

Forthcoming – on Saturday I’m looking forward to a writing day at Riverhill Himalayan Gardens with poet friend Lucy and numerous others. The day is organised as part of Abegail Morley‘s poetry residency there, and if the sun shines it will be glorious. (Abegail recently posted a Q & A with me on her blog, on the subject of Telltale Press – do have a read if you’re interested.) Then on Monday I’m going to the Troubadour for Smith’s Knoll night and an injection of poetradrenaline (see what I did there?)

A few dates when I’m reading: Lewes and Brighton folks, I’d love to see you at St Anne’s in Lewes on Sunday 14th June 3pm, when I’ll be taking part in a reading on the (loosely interpreted, I hope) subject of ‘Creation’, alongside Ann Segrave, Jeremy Page and Mandy Pannett. Free, with a collection afterwards.

On Thursday 18th June at 7pm I’ll be at the Poetry Cafe in London for the next Telltale Poets & Friends (also FREE), reading with another lovely group of poets, namely Tamar Yoseloff, Sue Rose, Peter Kenny and our newest Telltale poet, Sarah Barnsley. I’m currently working with Sarah on producing her pamphlet and I can tell you it’s going to be big. Stand back for an early autumn launch.

Then on Monday 22nd June at 7.30pm as part of the Camberwell Arts Festival I’m reading at The Crooked Well together with Richard Skinner, Josephine Corcoran and Roy Marshall. Possibly free, or nearly. No wonder poets are all skint!

After that I’ll be taking a summer break from readings and the like. There’s a new home to think about, after all.

Blog/ 13/05/2015

News of readings, launches

Pamphlet launch

This evening Telltale Press goes global! Well, it makes its debut in the southwest of England, anyway… Siegfried Baber launches his debut pamphlet, When Love Came To the Cartoon Kid, at Toppings Bookstore in Bath, 8pm this evening. Come on down! Siegfried set the room alight when he read for us recently in Lewes. Talented & entertaining. If you can’t make it, be sure to snap up his pamphlet here…

Readings past …

I didn’t do a write up of the Mayfield Festival Fringe poetry evening, mainly because I was stuck in the hellhole of jury service, but it was a fab night. An absolutely packed room, I had to negotiate with the lovely host Sian Thomas for space to move (“no! don’t put any more chairs there!”). It was in the round and the audience was warm and attentive. My fellow readers were Patricia McCarthy (a dauntingly well-read poet, editor of the fine magazine Agenda and winner of the National Poetry Competition in 2013) and Jill Munro, doing her first fully-fledged reading and making a brilliant job of it. Very funny and definitely upcoming, with her first pamphlet out soon from Green Bottle Press.

Meanwhile here I am mid-flow with my ‘cartwheel’ poem…nothing to do with jazz hands, trust me.

Readings future…

Next Wednesday 20th May at the Barbican Library in London I’m on the bill for the launch event for Brittle Star issue 36. I love magazine launches as it gives you the chance to meet the other poets/writers in the same issue, and the editors of course, and you get a real feel for the culture/ethos of the publication, if that doesn’t sound too grand.

Doors open 6.30pm and it’s free, should be over by nine – do come!

On Sunday 14th June at 4pm I’m on home ground here in Lewes, reading at a wee fundraiser for St Anne’s Church, by invitation of lovely Lewes poet Ann Segrave, and with Mandy Pannett & Jeremy Page also reading. The theme is ‘creation’ (in a strictly ecumenical/not necessarily religious sense)… so I’d bettter get creating. Free, very relaxed and probably very Lewes!

On Thursday 18th June Telltale Poets & Friends is back at the Poetry Cafe in London, featuring a star-studded cast: Tamar Yoseloff, Sue Rose, our newest Telltale Sarah Barnsley, plus Peter Kenny & myself. It’s free, and it would be lovely to see you – please put it in your diary!

And the midsummer reading extravaganza continues with Camberwell Arts Festival, where I’ll be reading on Monday 22nd June alongside Richard Skinner, Roy Marshall and Josephine Corcoran. Lordy! What a poet-blogger fest that will be. Can’t wait!

Blog/ 15/12/2014

Christmas reading material

I can’t tell you how great it will be to get our dining room back in order – currently it’s awash with piles of music, half-made Christmas cards, newspaper spread about the place with things drying (paint, glue), various papers to do with work but not yet actioned or filed, plus books and magazines I haven’t yet read, and laundry. OK, so the laundry will be under control today I hope. But I’ve just scooped up a bunch of reading material that I’m hoping I’ll get to enjoy a read of over Christmas.

Books to read this Xmas

I’ve been sitting on the Vanguard #1Poetry Anthology for several weeks, and a glance at the list of contributors confirms that it’s going to be a strong read.

Then there’s Josephine Corcoran’s new pamphlet, ‘The Misplaced House‘. I’m familiar with a few of the poems in this and I’m very pleased for Josephine that she’s been published by tall-lighthouse, their pamphlets are invariably excellent.

Recently arrived in the post is the BlueGate Poets Anthology 2014 which will be fun to delve into. I’m a sort of associate member of BlueGate – I live rather a long way from their Swindon heartland, so don’t get to join in things much, but I’m there in spirit!

Also just in is the December edition of Poetry – the first issue of my new subscription, and I couldn’t resist a quick look through when it arrived, reading the introduction to the section on Larry Eigner. I’m very excited about being introduced to a wider range of contemporary poets and learning more about the US scene.

You might wonder what Thoughts on Design by Paul Rand is doing here. Not poetry, but close – Rand was a highly influential graphic designer who wrote this ‘manifesto’ in 1947, updated in 1970, and it’s still considered to be a classic. I’m halfway through this super book, illustrated throughout with Rand’s own designs, many of which are very familiar (for example logos for IBM and ABC).

Vanguard Readings – Six Poets & Anthology Launch

Richard Skinner’s excellent Vanguard Readings at The Bear in Camberwell generally hosts both poets and prose writers, but last night was a poetry special. Somehow I managed to arrived only just in time, but I’m pleased I did as the first reader was my friend Josephine Corcoran.

Josephine’s first pamphlet is ‘The Misplaced House’, out from tall-lighthouse at the end of this month and I think it’s going to be a corker (no pun intended… well, maybe). Reading first (or last!) isn’t always easy but Josephine did a fine job. She was followed by Josephine Dickinson, a poet who I’m not familiar with, but I enjoyed the sense of magic she created in the room and and felt I wanted to know more about her and her work. All the way from Alston in Cumbria, a place I know (and I know how far it is from anywhere), an impressive way to come to entertain the Vanguard audience.

Vanguard Readers 20-11-14

The final first-half reader was no less than Michael Symmons Roberts, reading mostly from his amazing book Drysalter which won last year’s Forward Poetry Prize and Costa Book Award as well as being shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize. It was a shame that Michael had to leave for his train back to Manchester as I’d like to have spoken to him. I liked his reading style and was fascinated to know more about how he went about writing Drysalter, 150 poems each 15 lines long, over 5 years.

In the second half I moved down the front and consequently the photos are a bit less fuzzy, although I seem to have captured some shut-eye moments in the readers – sorr-eee! Not only did we hear from Matt Merritt, legendary blogger and the official bird watching poet – great to meet him at last – but also Cristina Navazo-Eguía Newton who I last saw performing flamenco in Swindon. In Matt’s reading I particularly enjoyed the poems from his ‘unpronounceable’ collection hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica from Nine Arches Press. Good thing it’s available to buy online, as I’m not sure I’d be able to ask for it in our local bookshop.

3 more Vanguard Readers 201114

When Cristina took to the floor she commanded it as usual, petite as she it, her personality is ginormous and she recited two of her long poems, entirely from memory, with electricity and panache. Very hard to take one’s eyes off her! The final reader of the evening was our host Richard Skinner who read three poems from the first anthology from Vanguard Editions, by poets who couldn’t be present – the last of which was by Marion Tracy, from her excellent pamphlet The Giant in the Doorway (HappenStance). Richard gave Marion an amazing introduction and announced her to be ‘one of the least well known poets around but one of the best’. Are you listening, Marion?! Hope so!

vanguard #1anthology

It’s always nice to put faces to names at these events, and I was very pleased to meet for the first time blogger poet Clarissa Aykroyd, and to chat with her on the bus back towards Victoria about the various merits of Vancouver vs London and knowing someone from Kamloops.

Events/ 07/07/2014

Swindon Festival of Poetry

Hurray! First of all I managed to snag a place on the Don Share workshop in October in Swindon (before it sold out) and then thanks to a prompt from Josephine Corcoran I’m now booked in from Friday night, so I’ll be able to join in on Saturday also.

The Swindon Festival of Poetry, brainchild of the indefatigable Hilda Sheehan, takes place from Thursday 2nd to Sunday 5th October, and with the range of workshops, readings, walks and other fun events on offer I think it’s going to be a super weekend.

It feels like so long since I was able to think/talk/write poetry for more than a couple of hours at a time. So I really feel I need this. Can’t wait.

Come along if you can – for the whole event, for a day or for an individual session or two – bookings are open now and all the details are here.

Tag: josephine corcoran