Hello 2023!

I hope the year has started well for you. Very busy here but just wanted to do a little update as it’s been a while. At the end of the year, I was busy delivering a series of creative writing workshops in acute psychiatric wards in Sheffield Hospitals. This is my second year delivering for the Sheffield Health and Social Care Arts Festival and I always love it. The patients and nurses were absolutely brilliant and some wonderful words were written.

I’ve also been putting together a poetry commission for Off the Shelf Festival of Words working with young people from across South Yorkshire schools and the Hive network. I’ve just passed everything to the brilliant filmmaker and audio/visual whizz Kitty Turner, and can’t wait to see the results in February!

I’ve recently been planning for the teaching of a few courses coming up this spring which I’m really excited about! One is a young writer retreat at Ty Newydd Writing Centre in Wales. It’s been a dream of mine for a long time to work with young writers in Wales. Growing up in a small Welsh town in the 80s, there really wasn’t anything available to me to develop as (or dream about becoming) a writer. I’m really looking forward to hopefully planting some seeds with local young people!

I’m also currently planning an adult poetry course with Vanessa Lampert and Kathryn Bevis, so excited! More on this soon!