I’m usually all about privileging words but this time I want to share the non-hierarchical top ten of my writing year in images. Don’t worry word lovers, there are a few of those too.
1) One of the things that has coloured so much of my writing this year is how people might find hope and agency when the systems of oppression are so dominant. How can they possibly find hope when a genocide is being attempted against them? I don’t know, but this poetry extract from a Poetry Pharmacy jar sums up for me what we have seen from Palestinians this year – that some things and people refuse to be destroyed. 2) For the first half of the year, I became a sole carer. It wasn’t expected and it didn’t feel like I had much of a choice. Often I felt like it wasn’t just the person I was caring for who was dangling from a frayed rope. Sometimes we both dropped. I have done a lot of sole caring in my lifetime and sometimes resented this, perceived it as a burden, a distraction from my ‘real work’. But I have carved out space and boundaries in 2024. I have received so much care, love and support from others (including the one I was caring for) and gratitude has flooded into me. I have come to see the value in being able to care for those you love, that this is part of my work. I have come to realise that sometimes we are the tree, sometimes the rope, sometimes we are swinging, sometimes we fall, that I can swim. 3) Nourishment came when I was able to lie fallow or share the concept and practice of fallowness with others. My friend Anita let me stay on her farm where I spent much of my time writing in this gorgeous ‘love shack’. Then she kindly allowed me and workshop participants to host Fallow at the Farm, a creative day retreat there. The company was lovely, the experience unique and people who came certainly found it restorative. I’m looking forward to developing more fallow spaces for others in 2025. 4. This was taken at the Rave against Racism event at Beaver Works, which raised over £4000 for Medical Aid Palestine. What I didn’t expect was that reading here and being part of a Words, Beats, Tunes, Truths would help reconnect me to the burgeoning Leeds poetry community. I really appreciate this as I’ve not had as much time, health or opportunity to be involved in spoken word in recent years.5. Collective writing sessions such as Writers’ Hours provided by London Writers Salon, and writing groups have provided motivation and peer support. My favourite workshops have taken my poetry and memoir in new directions. These were run by Jess Wright at independent queer bookshop, The Bookish Type, and Kerri ní Dochartaigh. Kerri’s Oneamotherness course was a mutually supportive space for writing about care and mothering. This photograph also points to how invigorating I have found reading this year, particularly memoir written by women. You can find mini-appraisals of some of the books I have loved on my Insta page. 6. As my readers know, I don’t write only for the page. My sisters hugged me to work is a collaboration between myself and textile artist Becky Moore. The hanging was produced to tell stories of disabled mill workers for the Any work that wanted doing exhibition, which was curated by Gill Crawshaw. We are delighted that it has a permanent home in Sunny Bank Mills.7. It is obvious to say that women’s achievements are often under-recognised. But Pippa Hale’s Ribbons Sculpture, created to celebrate Leeds women, seeks to unveil some of them. What a boost and surprise it was for my name to be included amongst so many brilliant women.8. Outside it is Beautiful. That was the message and experience of the collaborative research and development project put together by Verity Healey and Sarah Hehir to celebrate places and nature along the train route from Leeds-Morecambe with people who live along the line. Represented by an audio adventure, produced by Sarah and Verity with inspiration from those we wrote and spoke with, it really was an adventure and I couldn’t have asked for better travelling companions. 9. Rejection burnout can hit us all as writers, making us less inclined to submit work. But lately I have found the desire to send my writing off into the world again. Fab journals publishing my poems and people’s responses make me glad I have. And this month Becky Moore and I received news that Hedgehog Press shortlisted our poetry and art pamphlet manuscript in their Crimson Spine Pocket Book competition. 10. News that I received a Developing your Creative Practice grant from Arts Council England has been the best thing to happen for my writing to date. Having time and money to write and experiment with my memoir writing, to work with mentor Kerri ní Dochartaigh on my book means I will be able to let go of some responsibilities in 2025.
In the summer, I raided my literal and physical memory chest to stimulate ideas for my memoir. This print – an experiment for a Morley Literature Festival collaboration in 2013 with Bryony Pritchard – continues to resonate. Its message and the process of writing memoir provoked me to release some difficult things from my past. I have even let go of most of the objects in the chest, although I have photographed those I want to keep close.
I hope you are able to let go of what you need to today. Here’s to a 2025 of less ash and more green shoots.
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