Category: Uncategorized
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Free Speech A Problem For a Council
A Shocking Reason For Losing A Gig This Week: Giving a quote to a local paper two years ago, when asked, saying that councils shouldn’t charge libraries business rates. Yes, really. Having been booked to host Hambleton District Council’s awards since last November, I was told with a week to go that they were going…
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Forgetting Faces
Two days of conferences. Or, as they’re alternatively known, the prosopagnosiac’s nightmare. (Person bad at remembering faces). Bad ways to greet a prosopagnosiac: “Do you remember me?” An answer of no usually seems to offend. (Offended tone & still not giving your name) “But we met at – “ (name event where there were lots…
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Cultural Transformations- Hull as a Tiger
I’m back in Thieving Harry’s on Humber Street overlooking Hull’s marina. The sky’s grey, it’s raining. Nice coffee and things with avocados in are on the menu, served at wooden trestle tables with mismatched chairs. I came here a lot while I was doing things during the year of culture. A quiet place to breathe.…
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Me- Autistic? As If…
IF I was autistic I would still be that poet who made a leap of imagination that caused your brain to jump, the comedian who made you laugh (sometimes), the facilitator who ran that writing workshop with empathy and care and cried and laughed with several strangers over the things we dared express, the girl…
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Speaking Out- International Women’s Day Blog
Have been involved in speaking up about several different things recently, both with others and on my own. I’ve seen changes happen as a result. I didn’t use to have any confidence that using my voice could change things. Now the more I see it can, the more I have confidence in using it. This…
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Response to Don Paterson and Rebecca Watts on Front Row
Am still thinking about issues raised by the PN Review debate this week. Partly because doing my job (poet-ing) reminds me of it constantly, partly because I’m prepping for my PhD viva and wondering how relevant (some aspects of) my work actually is to other practitioners, partly because my last blog on it was written…
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More Than One Poetry: Omnivorousness and Snobbery in Poetry-World.
There is probably a PhD-worth’s response that could be made to a recent article about some successful poets who were dubbed “artless”, “amateurs” and “uncivilised” by another poet. (Hollie McNish/PN Review) I’m just going to focus on a couple of elements for now which strongly chimed with my own research into class, gender and performance.…
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Flash, bang, Me Too trauma, what a picture.
In the first car accident, a car turned wrongly and too fast into a box junction I was crossing and hit my Fiesta, crumpling the front passenger side. I heard a big bang, instinctively braked, then saw the other driver, a tall man, on the road ahead of me hitting his car bonnet over and…
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The Poems That Sold
Her poems are about the ways rebellion is sold to us but become ways to sell rebellion to us. Her poems are about the ways the exotic is sold to us but become ways to sell the exotic to us. Her poems are about the way motherhood is sold to us but become ways to…
Kate Fox. Writer, Broadcaster and Performer: Where There's Muck, There's Bras. 