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overleaf.bsky.social
Poet- PhD student at Birkbeck working on trees and marginal identities in C19th women’s poetry. Working-class, mixed, bi, AuDHD, RRMSer. She/her. Loves beer, records and your dog.
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Whenever I speak up about being working-class in the arts, or share my experiences, I always get some classplaining back. People who aren't working-class keen to tell me how I should feel or tell me they're middle-class but have 'struggled with money' in the past www.theguardian.com/culture/2025...

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

After having the audacity to see a small group of friends for a quiet breakfast yesterday, my ribs have decided I am, in fact, one of Thomas More’s heretics. Aggressive resting today. ‘MS hug’ totally worth it for the actual hugs though. #RRMS

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

Percy Shelley: I propose a ghost story contest! What is the SCARIEST story concept??? Mary Shelley: a guy creates another guy Byron: I don’t get it Mary Shelley: (*looks directly into the camera)

submitted 3 days ago • 14 comments

We're in a coup, which means we're in a nightmare, which means we're all ramped up, so let me offer you some deep time, perseverance, and beauty, before you and I go back to the work.

submitted 6 days ago • 83 comments

This is happening, right now. The great "arribada" (arrival) of mother Olive Ridley sea turtles on the Odisha coast, where they dig sand-nests & lay their eggs, driven by ancient instinct. Heart-lifting, magnificent, moving: part of a geography of hope. 🎞️ by Bivash Pandav via my friend Yuvan Aves.

submitted 6 days ago • 52 comments

1825: Saw a large bunch of blue violets in flower & a root of the Bedlam cowslip

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

You're supposed to be honoured and delighted 'just to be nominated' for awards, but when you're working class you can't afford to be happy missing out on a cash prize. The money means more than the recognition. We can't pay the water bill with recognition.

submitted 14 days ago • 1 comment

I was planning my Arvon Masterclass on pacing this afternoon. Got quite excited, as it isn't something I've taught exactly like this before. Still places available for Friday. Why don't you join us? www.arvon.org/writing-cour... @arvonfoundation.bsky.social

submitted 15 days ago • 2 comments

'On the nights she struggled to breathe, she was forced to stay awake and hold the mask to her face in the dark. The NHS’s solution?...one assessor suggested her 14-yr-old daughter fill in as a child carer...being on call for the ventilator throughout the night.' www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

submitted 29 days ago • 0 comments

I’m fascinated by the ‘shrinking’ quality of the stanza used by Robert Burns in which longer lines give way to shorter ones in a kind of funnel for the celebration of smallness. A nice example here by Norfolk dialect poet John Kett, on looking at the stars someflowerssoon.substack.com/p/wee-sleeket

submitted 31 days ago • 0 comments

I was recently diagnosed with MS; a relapse has kept me from working. It’s made me ponder my profession’s overemphasis on ‘productivity’, & the lack of (self) compassion that attends it. Managed to read this morning for the first time in weeks- fitting that the book is about ‘generous relenting’.

submitted 31 days ago • 0 comments

collections often are criticised for “unevenness” but isn’t that also part of their charm? that the workings of a poet “becoming” are also on the page, next to poems that feel crystallised? don’t we love process and learning and error more than the language of product & perfection? or shouldn’t we?

submitted 35 days ago • 7 comments

Some positive news! ✨ www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

submitted 34 days ago • 0 comments

I have a piece up for The Bookseller today, in which I consider how major publishers can create space for the small presses that keep the literary scene afloat. www.thebookseller.com/comment/what...

submitted 43 days ago • 1 comment

Back in 2016-2017 I used to write for those free movie preview magazines you get in cinemas. I worked in a cinema at the time and could write them while the film was playing. I made it my mission to mention Godzilla in every piece I wrote. Here are some examples.

submitted 47 days ago • 3 comments

Massive away win for the little fella.

submitted 85 days ago • 588 comments

I heard there was a secret mash That turned into a graveyard smash But you don't really care for monsters, do you?

submitted 121 days ago • 17 comments

Saying ‘Happy National Poetry Day’ to strangers just to feel something

submitted 146 days ago • 3 comments

"tits or ass"? bro, the undeniable passion she has for her special interests in the face of a world which tries to kill that spark

submitted 154 days ago • 53 comments

Quote post with a picture in your phone that has your energy, not a selfie.

submitted 157 days ago • 0 comments

Advance copies of my next book Lore of the Deep just arrived! It's full of myths, legends and Lore of the oceans with gorgeous illustrations by Stacey Rozich. Out in October so please preorder ❤ #kidlit

submitted 158 days ago • 0 comments

on trespass John Clare, from Peterborough MS A61

submitted 165 days ago • 1 comment

This is quite hard because I’ve recently become a huge musical magpie, but this covers some decent ground. 10 bands/musicians to know me: Ian Dury and the blockheads Jeffrey Lewis Fugazi Mulatu Astatke Julia Holter Hamish Hawk Betty Harris Karen Dalton John Cale Haruomi Hosono

submitted 164 days ago • 0 comments

It's autumn! Fall colors are not a passive response to cold, but the result of an active time in the life of a tree, in which complex behaviors withdraw nutrients from the leaves and store them in the stem and roots. Over the few weeks, we'll show the details of autumn biology. What are you seeing?

submitted 165 days ago • 32 comments

Beleaf in yourself

submitted 164 days ago • 0 comments

speak your truth

submitted 166 days ago • 52 comments

Season of mists and melon usefulness

submitted 168 days ago • 3 comments

May I interest the gentleman in a…writing bunker? www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/1...

submitted 173 days ago • 1 comment

Carl Phillips, from "Among the Trees" (I'm going to wonder for a while on which tree-songs I know by heart)

submitted 176 days ago • 0 comments

SHOCKING NEWS THAT WILL SHOCK YOU!

submitted 180 days ago • 64 comments

Great phrase. One of the things that really fascinates me is how this passes down generations: my parents are very much middle class, but both are children of people who grew up in abject poverty. That's led to both being obsessed with not spending/being careful and in work. Every penny measured

submitted 184 days ago • 9 comments