One of the things that helps me when I am feeling anxious*, as I seem to be a lot these days, is reading. Reading fiction, or non-fiction, immersing myself in someone else's world. And the effect lasts after I stop reading, it is most definitely a calmative, so I thought I would bring you a couple of things I have been enjoying reading lately.

National Poetry Month begins today in the US and I've been thinking a lot about poetry lately - reading it and writing it so I'll start with some of that:

A Brief History of Time is Shaindel Beers' new collection (published by Salt), and this woman is a poet after my own heart, combining science with the human condition in original, surprising, wryly amusing and exquisitely painful ways. From the title poem:

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So what Is a Writer in residence?
If I had a pound for every time I’ve been asked that question I’d have enough money to fund such a post in every UK prison.
But as it stands there are just 20 of us scattered across the UK.
And less than 100 across the globe.
So what DO we do?
The short answer is we raise self esteem through writing.
From poets to playwrights and dramatists to journalists we share one thing - a passion for the written word.
We know its power to communicate, to be heard, to record, to inspire – both ourselves and others.
But if all this sounds a bit arty let me invite you to share a typical day.

It’s 8am I make my way to my office to finish the feedback I am preparing on a prisoner’s novel.
“When I write it takes me to a different world,” he says.
Next, the library where I lead the first of two weekly writing groups.
By 9.15am nine of my regular writers and a new member are here.
Today I bring in a copy of Saturday's Guradian and direct them to the Playlist section where readers send in their memories attached to song lyrics.
I encourage the group to try it out.
We carry out several writing exercises which are read out to the group.
It takes generosity and confidence to appraise another’s work honestly but the group have refined their skills in this area.
After a fair bit of laughing and singing we settle down to some serious work and Jenn, the librarian joins us.
I use lines from the song New York New York and include my memories of running the New York Marathon.
T writes about the last night at home with his wife before he was jailed linking it to a song by Genesis, Follow Me Follow You.
Jenn writes about her late grandfather who used to sing Lady In Red to her grandma when he came home late from the pub.
S arrives a little late but tells us about the song Crazy For You and a mad one night stand.
K surprises everyone with an atmospheric account of a late night drive home with a beautiful girl and the next time he hears the song he is in a sweatbox on his way to jail.
P has us all choked reciting one line from a Coldplay song played at his little brother’s funeral - "Lights go out - can't be saved."
All too soon the session is over and my new member tells me:
“I didn’t realize I had that in me.”
After the session I contact an author who is due to visit the prison soon.
Every month I invite a writer to talk about their work and past visits include poet, Jean Sprackland, novelist, Joolz Denby and childrens’ writer Joseph Delaney, who published his first book, The Spooks Apprentice, at the age of 58.
Last year Neil Caple, a former member of The Royal Shakespeare Company helped out with a four-week Drama course.
One of the prisoners on the course went on to win first prize in the Writing For Stage section of The 2008 Koestler Awards.
This man has never worked in his life and came to jail with no qualifications. Although he has since left this jail I have heard he recently started a BA (Hons) in Scriptwriting.
I spend lunchtime with the librarian and we discuss my plan to introduce “Stories Connect” into the prison.
The librarian helps me collate a carefully selected list of texts which examine a range of issues from violence to family life and drugs.
The fictional characters will help provide a vehicle for discussing choices and actions.
After lunch I visit the Therapeutic Community where I mentor prisoners working on The Link magazine, a publication produced here and distributed to every prison in the country.
The latest issue is almost finished and after making a few suggestions I leave to visit the Induction wing.
A young man has just arrived from a Young Offender's unit where he began working on his life story with the writer in residence there.
It is a harrowing story told with brutal honesty.
“Writing everything down helps me make sense of what’s in my head,” he says.
On the way back to my office I check how the multimedia unit is progressing.
A team of staff and prisoners will work together to produce a range of material from posters and books to short films and documentaries.
Finally, back at my office and on my desk is a letter sent by an ex-prisoner who worked with me some months ago.
So what does a writer in residence do? – I’ll let him have the last word.
“Your writing class was the best thing I have ever done in all my time in prison.
”I’ve noticed when I write I can address so many different things in so many different ways.
"I find the more I read and write the better I become.
" Thank You.”


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Besides, one glass of wine and three thin triangles is hardly gluttony. Oh, and a lovely sausage roll that was more like a tiny cushion than a bolster.


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When I was little I drew a lot. I drew, I didn't write stories. Only, at some point, the two combined and I started writing and drawing comic strips. And I wonder whether it was at that point where It all began.

But until yesterday, when I found the above, I hadn't seen any of my creations in almost twenty years, I'd assumed they'd been thrown out. Until yesterday, when I found the above, which, oddly enough, is the one I can clearly, vividly, remember drawing. I drew it on my bedroom floor on a Saturday afternoon. I was somewhere between 8 and 10 years old. It was spring. I drew it with a silver Parker propelling pencil I'd been bought for my birthday and I seem to remember that I mispelled 'pirates' intentionally. (Yes folks, I was An Individual even then!)

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So, it's festival time again. That makes me sound like an old hand, which would hardly be true. Having said that, if a festival and publisher have paid for you to fly halfway round the world, they get their money's worth, and in ten days in New Zealand and Australia I did something like five festival sessions complete with post-session gallop down to the bookshop tent to sign things, as well as TV, radio, press, a couple of photos. I've a nasty feeling that real authors are supposed to hate it, to be such tender plants or introverts that standing up in public is agony, or at least to regard it as a terrible waste of good writing time. I'm obviously not a real author, because I enjoy it enormously. Yes, it's more fun talking to 200 festival goers with the Australian sun beaming down outside the marquee, than it is signing 2½ books on a wet Saturday lunchtime that happens to coincide with a European Cup match, but it's still fun. And yes, the actual hour on the platform isn't a waste of good writing time - you could say that it is writing time, if writing is communicating to readers.

What still surprises me is how long I take to get my normal, concentrated, tunnel-visioned, misanthropic, writer's balance back afterwards, and that does often feel like a waste of time. Like a grumpy eight year old, I don't want it to be Monday, or not my birthday, or not Christmas. I scull around the house, a spoilt brat whose audience has left...

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There’s more to writing than prose, and I wonder if you’ve ever considered writing for screen? I found my feet as a writer with some classes in scriptwriting conducted by a lovely guy called Jon Wood, whose career has been all about creating plays for children. It turns out that I was one of them, way back when, and now he was my mentor as an adult.

Jon’s classes were an opportunity to test out concepts and scenes with an audience of other writers, and even by reading out scenes ourselves we got to learn a lot about pace, dialogue, and character. Sometimes we had the luxury of acting students performing what we’d done, script in hand, and that moved the whole process up a notch...



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It's not been a great few months, in fact this year started pretty badly, with illness and anxiety etc..., and has only got slightly better since now I have a space to write and the energy to actually do it, some of the time.

I was quite upset last week to discover, checking my book's Amazon page, that there was a negative review. Welcome to the real world! I hadn't yet experienced someone talking the time and effort to tell people what he didn't like about The White Road and Other Stories. Already not feeling so strong, I took it quite hard, all those initial urges to just burn every copy and disappear into a small hole. It took the help of a number of author friends, some with far worse experiences to share, to get me to calm down and see that the fact that he wrote at the end of the review " after the hype on the internet and in New Scientist, I was expecting something special" is a good thing - it means there was hype!

Ok, so, this morning's post brought me something to make my day a little brighter.

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It is with great pleasure that I welcome poet, novelist and all round lovely lady, Fiona Robyn to my blog, for the latest stage on her blog tour in support of her debut, The Letters.

So, let's get going...


The Letters, Fiona, who’s it for and what’s it about?

The Letters tells the story of workaholic divorcee Violet who leaves her old life behind to go and live by the sea, where she starts receiving mysterious letters written by a girl in a mother and baby home in 1959. This novel happens to have female lead characters and so may appeal more to women, but that was never my intention - it depends if male readers are comfortable enough with their masculinity to be seen reading it in public!



Do letters play a significant part in your life?

They used to – I had a good pen friend from the age of 13 until we were 20, but we tend to meet up instead these days. Email certainly plays a significant part, and some of my emails are longer ‘letter-like’ ones. I feel very comfortable writing my thoughts down and use journals a lot. But there’s nothing like a face to face chat with coffee with cake.

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'No, no! ' He laughed at my literal-mindedness and poor grasp of council-speak. 'Affordable' doesn't mean that. It's the recognised term for 'social housing''.

'Social housing. Do you mean council houses?'

He winced again at the obsolete terminology. 'Housing Associations.'


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Well, my daughter has had a very good weekend. Supported, but not 'pushed' by my husband and I, she first passed her prelimary LAMDA (London School of Music and Dramatic Arts) exam with merit and then finished the last day of her workshop with excellent reviews and a visit from a casting director. At only 8 years old I am so proud of her. She absolutely loves to act and dance but being such an expensive hobby she is gradually draining her father and I dry of our money. I bet she graduates school and becomes a secretary!