Creative Writing – How to Set Your Story in Time and Place

I’m just starting to work on a new writing project, so the setting of the story is very much on my mind. As a huge fan of Thomas Hardy’s Wessex novels, as well as classics like Wuthering Heights, I’m conscious of the powerful role that location can...

National Poetry Day

In a recent question and answer session promoting the Cheltenham Literary Festival, Carol Ann Duffy said, “For me, poetry is the music of being human. And also a time machine by which we can travel to who we were and to who we will become” *Collective...
Be Controversial

Be Controversial

I’ve had a line from one of James Fenton’s poems kicking around in my head for ages now: Every victim is an accomplice.  It’s such a chilling thought – that in a way we collude in our own misfortunes, and I am sure that some who have been...