Welcome to my website! This is a place for me to share my poems, share poems I love by other poets and to write about my two favourite things- writing and psychiatry.
It's also a place where I plan to blog about the perils of doctoring when I'm probably slightly more suited to writing poetry than saving lives...
It's also a place where I plan to blog about the perils of doctoring when I'm probably slightly more suited to writing poetry than saving lives...
I am currently editing my first medical-themed poetry pamphlet, Post-ictal and another pamphlet about relationships called Cold Light. Some of my prize-winning and published poems can be found here.
I am half way through my first novel The Eloquence of Hopelessness, set in a psychiatric hospital about a psychiatrist who works for the NHS by day and on an anonymous suicide hotline by night, where she gets over attached to an enigmatic man who keeps calling from the Forth Road Bridge threatening to jump.
I ran my own therapeutic writing group here in Falmouth and am currently working with Lapidus and Arts for Health Cornwall to host a year of writing for wellbeing workshops and events across Cornwall in 2015. See https://spreadthewordcornwall.wordpress.com/about/the-spread-the-word-team/ to see what we've been up to.
I also really enjoy editing and critiquing other writers' poetry and novel manuscripts, so I'm always happy to have writing flung my way for feedback and suggestions! E-mail me at [email protected]
I am half way through my first novel The Eloquence of Hopelessness, set in a psychiatric hospital about a psychiatrist who works for the NHS by day and on an anonymous suicide hotline by night, where she gets over attached to an enigmatic man who keeps calling from the Forth Road Bridge threatening to jump.
I ran my own therapeutic writing group here in Falmouth and am currently working with Lapidus and Arts for Health Cornwall to host a year of writing for wellbeing workshops and events across Cornwall in 2015. See https://spreadthewordcornwall.wordpress.com/about/the-spread-the-word-team/ to see what we've been up to.
I also really enjoy editing and critiquing other writers' poetry and novel manuscripts, so I'm always happy to have writing flung my way for feedback and suggestions! E-mail me at [email protected]
Nice things people have said about my poems...
‘There is so much to admire in this brave and important poem, particularly the poet’s careful and delicate use of language to peel back the layers of an experience in which the seizure itself feels almost orgasmic in its reaching the ‘very crux’ of ‘self-abandonment’. Mandy Pannett Judge of Psychiatry research Trust Competition
‘Bridgewatcher’ is an unforgettable poem, well-crafted and written with sensitivity and compassion. An outstanding winner.’ Mandy Pannett Judge of Psychiatry Research Trust Competition
‘A contemporary take on death, as cryptic and rhythmic as it is sad and unnerving.’ Millicent Danker
‘Fantastic, poignant, modern, personal, moving. Loved it’ Anonymous judge from Poetic Republic Competition 2013
‘Strong central conceit coupled with evocative, emotionally intense imagery…Specificity raises this above many break-up poems’ Nicolette Golding participant in Poetic Republic 2012 competition