Author Archives: vessel

Reflections on a year of writing

My Arts Council England-funded time working on CYMA is coming to an end. It has been the most amazing year of writing and creative development. Here I look back on what DYCP funding has helped me to achieve, and what’s next for my project and practice.

Writing as work

I went into this project at a strange and scary time in my career. I took my writing seriously and had had some success, but I had been struggling to fit it around a demanding day job in which I spent my week, my evenings, my weekends supporting other writers. I loved doing this work, but my own writing suffered. I realised it was time to rebalance my efforts and to put my own writing higher up on my to-do list. 

Over the last few months I have worked consistently on the project and manuscript, which has been the first time in my life, apart from one month of furlow in 2020, that I have been able to dedicate time to my writing on a regular and generous basis.

Five notebooks of different sizes and shapes are arranged on a wooden desk next to a black computer keyboard.
A year’s notebooks

The thing I’m most proud of having accomplished during this project is sitting at my desk every Monday morning and writing. It sounds small, but it’s a luxury not everyone can always afford. I couldn’t until this year. It has allowed me to consider my creative development as work, and to rebalance my working life to better honour my writing.

Unexpected outputs

I have to admit that I have not finished writing and editing CYMA, although I am pleased with the partial draft so far. The beauty of DYCP is that I don’t necessarily have to have finished, as long as I have developed my creative practice in the ways I planned to, and that I have most definitely done. 

That’s not to say the project has been straightforward. I’ve had setbacks, including a nasty bout of covid. The creative process has taken me in unexpected directions, meaning that I haven’t always written exactly what I thought I’d be writing. I’ve had to follow the momentum and see where it takes me.

Flo is a white person with a long brown ponytail and wearing a green coat. They are holding a notebook filled with handwriting and are looking out over the coastal salt marshes of north Norfolk.
Writing in situ on the Norfolk coastal path

This has included finishing two abandoned projects alongside my work on CYMA. One of these I had been working on for twelve years (no exaggeration – I started it in October 2011). I woke up one morning, and knew exactly what I needed to do to finish it, and now it’s on submission. I hadn’t seen that one coming. 

One of the biggest learning points for me has been to keep writing – even when it’s hard, even if another idea is beckoning, the most important thing is to just write something. Who knows what it will become in the future… though, hopefully next time it won’t take twelve years to complete. 

New perspectives, new possibilities

The project has also afforded me opportunities to learn from some amazing teachers, for the first time on a one-to-one basis. The individual deep dives that my mentor Sascha A. Akhtar and performance coach Lewis Buxton undertook on my behalf gave me exactly the ‘step change’ I was hoping to gain from this project. 

Sascha instantly saw through to the heart of a creative block that I’ve been struggling with for a long time, and wouldn’t even have identified without her mentorship. Lewis crafted a thoughtful bespoke package that got me further towards being able to perform my work again than I thought was possible. As a result, my sense of how this project could be shared in future has completely changed, and this in turn has changed and improved the writing.  

Flo is a white person with long brown hair, wearing a white shirt and a pair of handmade hare's ears on a headband. They are kneeling next to a rusted metal pole and are seen through the stems of summer wildflowers.
In situ performance/embodied research, September 2023

So what next? I’m going to take my new regular writing habit with me as best I can, and hope to finish writing CYMA in 2024. It won’t be the book I envisaged at the start of this process. But it is the thing I have to write, not the thing I think I should write. I can’t wait to finish it and (gulp) perhaps even perform it in the future. And I have more of an idea of where my writing will go next. A game plan, if you will. 

DYCP is… well, ace

If someone were to ask me whether they should apply for DYCP, my answer would be, if you have a project that you need to do, and you need support to do it, then don’t hesitate. Even just writing the application is helpful in plotting your course and testing an idea. 

And if you’re successful… Well, in my experience it will surprise you, it will challenge you, it will hurt in a growing pains sort of a way, and it will be brilliant. You’ll reach the end and never want it to end. 

Whether it ends is then up to you. Once you’ve finished, you realise that you haven’t finished at all, and a whole new level of possibilities is suddenly stretched out before you, inviting you to come and explore, if you can only bring yourself to commit to it, if you dare. And best of all, you now have the experience and support to survive out there.

So what are you waiting for?

Writing through the difficult middle

I’m in the middle of my CYMA project, and remembering that middles can be hard, can’t they? We’ve all been there: the initial enthusiasm has been spent, there’s the sense that time is running out, and still you don’t feel like you’re anywhere near finishing. In a writing project, the middle is so often where doubts start to creep in and cause blocks. In my case the blocks have been physical and creative. The physical block was catching COVID at the end of May, and it took about six weeks to fully recover. The creative block was also a breakthrough, but it took its time about percolating through fully.

Following my first session with my mentor, Sascha A. Akhtar, I realised that I have been writing this project in a way I believed I ‘should’ write it, rather than in a way that is true to me, my process, and my subject. Sascha was able to communicate this to me in the first five minutes of our meeting, which was incredible to me after months of trying to force my writing down a misguided route. With Sascha’s guidance I’ve been able to start allowing myself to be led to an emergent marriage of form and content. This is how I usually write; I generate loads of material in enormous blocks of text, and then whittle it down into what will hopefully be a sharp, shining nugget. It can be slow work, but it works, and I didn’t need to abandon this method for the new project.

Research trip no. 2: The third thunderstorm of the day rolls in to destroy my tent.

This change in attitude has already made the project more enjoyable, but it took time to understand and implement it. Instead of a nimble about-turn, it felt rather like trying to make an aircraft carrier do a 180 degree turn through thick jelly. But finally, I’m listening to my subject, killing the darlings I was clinging to before, and allowing the writing to emerge. (I have a theory that there’s something about the lyric form that seeks to elide this sort of long attention in the writing, even as it demands it of the reader, but that’s an essay for another time.)

One of the key benefits of this approach is that I am more able to deal with setbacks. I had to postpone my second research trip to my site while I had COVID, and then once I got there again, I was camping in some of the most dramatic weather I’ve ever experienced. When one of my tent poles snapped and let heavy rain in to soak my spare clothes and even my notebook, I had to cut the trip short. Ordinarily I might have felt that incidents of this sort were thwarting the writing, but now I see that it’s all material.

This has been an important lesson for me to learn, and like all the best lessons it’s one I’ve been told many times by many different people, and only now do I fully understand what they meant. It’s what a friend tried to tell me in 2018 when he suggested I integrate my practice into a single output to save on energy. Later that same year another friend lent me their copy of Rachel Lichtenstein’s Estuary to show me that documenting the project can become the book itself. In 2019 I read Bhanu Kapil’s Ban en Banlieue, and many times since, and even the contents list is a lesson to “Write: the findings.” It’s the years of my visual art training to document process first and foremost. A coffee with my friend L earlier this year proved instructive when she advocated the importance to creative projects of time spent “staring at the wall”. It’s Sascha exhorting me to become a camera and “open the iris”. The process is the product.

Research trip 2: Drying out my notebook and itinerary after the tent disaster.

Now that I’ve finally joined all these dots, I see that my notes to self, itineraries that go unaccomplished, sick days when I wish I was well enough to write, and time spent staring at the wall can all feed the book. If I was writing a factual history of the Whirligig I’d be well off-piste by now, but I am trying to write about unhistorical time, about periphery and significance, about spheres of perception briefly and brilliantly overlapping and then diverging. Mishap and deferral are as much a part of the book as writing in situ at an appointed time.

So, the unwieldy aircraft carrier is back on course. I’m taking the summer to transcribe all I’ve written so far. And to try and try again to visit my site, and not be put off when it doesn’t work out. In the autumn, a new phase of the project begins and I’ll be upskilling in some different areas. But this bit, the middle of the project, is a time of renewed excitement and greater generosity to my past self, who hasn’t been doing nothing. Past me has filled notebooks, written for 10 hours a week since January, and most importantly of all, thought long and hard about how and why she still wants to share this place with other people through poetry. Now it’s just a case of following the why, and showing my workings.

Research reflections

It’s an exciting time in my ACE DYCP-supported project, CYMA. This week marks the final week of the research phase of the project. While I’ll continue to research my topics and relevant techniques throughout, this boundary marks a shift of emphasis: next week, writing becomes my primary focus.

In the field

At the weekend I undertook my first research trip, in which I travelled to the North Norfolk coast to do some site-specific writing and field recording on the salt marshes. The visit came at just the right time.

Flo is a white person wearing a green coat. They are next to a muddy path in a field, holding a recorder with a grey windjammer on it, and looking through a pair of binoculars.
Recording in the field with a secondhand Zoom H4N Pro, 18 March 2023 (c) Flo Reynolds.

While much of my research phase has been about reading theories of sound, it has also meant getting to grips with my field recording equipment. I’ve been running tests – strange rituals involving water, a wheelbarrow, and walking over gravel – and met with sound designer, composer and musician Jonathan Baker to help me get the best out of my equipment.

The research trip represented a chance to put all I have learned so far into practice, and take my new methodology out into the field. 

The Whirligig

I don’t remember how I came to settle on this landscape as a central part of the project – perhaps it’s in a notebook somewhere – but by 2020 when I wrote about scoping the project, I had already found the place I felt compelled to write about.

The Stiffkey Whirligig is a curious paved circle stretching out into the North Norfolk salt marsh, with a gallows-shaped metal pole at its centre.

The Stiffkey Whirligig radio arm is a rusted metal pole with a smaller metal pole at its top forming a right angle. The radio arm is almost silhouetted against a grey cloudy sky and gorse bushes.
The Stiffkey Whirligig radio arm, 18 March 2023 (c) Flo Reynolds.

The National Trust sign in the nearest carpark describes it as “a relic from the Cold War”; military history websites emphasise that it represents an early development in drone warfare from the Second World War, when many American troops were stationed nearby; and a friend local to the area tells me that it was once used as a sheep weighing station.

The metal arm is embossed with the name “Radioplane Company”; a quick Google search reveals that the company has Hollywood connections, having been founded by the actor Reginald Denny, and later employing a certain Norma Jeane Dougherty. 

Waves of stories

I’m less interested in the precise military use of the radio arm, although the vision of small balsa wood aeroplanes being hammerthrown from it, shot at by practicing troops, and then crash-landing on the saltmarsh, is an arresting image. More, it’s the overlapping and occasionally contradictory stories of the site which interest me.

There’s a sense of waves of different relationships between place and people along this coastline, echoing into history through stories of 19th century smuggling, through the Hanseatic League of the Middle Ages, through Roman Britain, and beyond… after all, Seahenge and Holme II were discovered just a few miles down the coast.

Flo is crouching down next to a large pool of water in the salt marsh landscape. They are wearing a green coat and holding a recorder with a grey windjammer and the cable of a hydrophone.
Taking a hydrophone recording in a pool at Stiffkey Marshes, 18 March 2023 (c) Flo Reynolds. I ensure my equipment is clean and washed before use to help prevent the spread of invasive species and harmful chemicals.

Today this coastline is home to the last few fishing boats, luxury second homes, and stand-up paddle board tours of the creeks. Beneath all of this, the salt marsh has been a fluctuating constant. It is an ecologically rich landscape, neither fully land nor water. In light of the climate and extinction events to come, it looks increasingly fragile.  

This is the landscape I have been fascinated by since I first visited in 2017, and where I first started practicing listening exercises in 2018. It’s where I now continue these practices, where I write in situ, and where I try to capture the sounds and stories of the marsh in all their variety. 

Writing live vs. writing the recording

Following the research trip, I now have pages of notes to work with, and many field recordings to listen back to, write from, edit into presentable shapes. One thing I’m particularly keen to compare is writing live versus writing from a recording – do any differences come through in the writing?

Flo is a white person wearing a yellow jumper and green coat. They are standing in front of a dinghy and crab pots on the Norfolk Coast while writing in a notebook.
Live writing on the windy Norfolk Coastal Path, 18 March 2023 (c) Flo Reynolds.

I spent hours on the marsh trying to get the perfect recording of a curlew’s call despite the wind, tapping the radio arm while stethoscoping it with a contact microphone, dipping a hydrophone into its pools and creeks. What do these recordings say of the place they originate from, while I’m back in my Norwich box room, trying to craft a successful pantoum? What might my eventual reader hear of them?

All of these questions, and more, are to be explored as I come at last to synthesising my research, and setting down to write.

CYMA research mixtape

I’m into the research phase of my ACE-funded poetry project (working title CYMA) and wanted to share the many brilliant sources that are inspiring and informing me along the way. I’ll update this list over the course of the project.

Audio sources

Books and written sources

Poetry

  • Victoria Adukwei Bulley, Quiet (London: Faber, 2022)
  • Sascha A. Akhtar, The Grimoire of Grimalkin (Cambridge: Salt, 2007)
  • John Ashbery, Collected Poems 1956-1987 (Manchester: Carcanet, 2010)
  • Caroline Bergvall, Drift (Brooklyn, NY: Nightboat Books, 2014)
  • Basil Bunting, Briggflatts (Hexham: Bloodaxe, 2009)
  • Antony Vahni Capildeo, Like A Tree Walking (Manchester: Carcanet, 2021)
  • Jean-Luc Champerret, The Lascaux Notebooks, translated by Philip Terry (Manchester: Carcanet, 2022)
  • W. S. Graham, New Collected Poems (London: Faber, 2004)
  • Bhanu Kapil, Ban en Banlieue (New York: Nightboat Books, 2015)
  • Norman MacCaig, various individual poems
  • Lorine Niedecker, Collected Poems, edited by Jenny Penberty (Berkley: University of California Press, 2002)
  • Alice Oswald, A Sleepwalk on the Severn (London: Faber, 2009)
  • Alice Oswald, Falling Awake (London: Jonathan Cape, 2016)
  • Chloe Proctor, Terraforming (Broken Sleep, 2023)
  • Lisa Robertson, The Weather (Vancouver: New Star Books, 2001)
  • James Schuyler, various individual poems
  • John Yau, various individual poems

Non-fiction

  • Stephen Benson and Will Montgomery (eds.), Writing The Field Recording: Sound, Word, Environment (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2018)
  • John Cage, Silence: Lectures and Writings (London: Marion Boyars Publishing, 1994)
  • Linda Cracknell, Writing Landscape (Saraband, 2023)
  • Steven Roger Fischer, A History of Writing (Bury St. Edmunds: Reaktion Books, 2001)
  • Cathy Lane and Angus Carlyle, In The Field: The Art of Field Recording (Uniform Books, 2011)
  • Michael Nardone (ed.), OEI #98-99: Aural Poetics, 2023
  • Pauline Oliveros, Deep Listening: A Composer’s Sound Practice (iUniverse, 2014)
  • Pauline Oliveros, Quantum Listening (London: Ignota, 2022)
  • Daphne Oram, An Individual Note: of Music, Sound and Electronics (Anomie Academic, 2016, reprint 2021)
  • Francis Pryor, Seahenge: A Quest for Life and Death in Bronze Age Britain (London: HarperPress, 2001)
  • Denise Riley, Time Lived, Without Its Flow (London: Picador, 2019)

Other

Visual, AV, exhibition and event sources

  • Kym Cox, Bubble Beats
  • Land Art Collective, soil chromatography workshop with Hannah Fletcher, April 2023, online
  • Richard Long, various works
  • Diemo Schwarz and User Studio, Dirty Tangible Interfaces

Developing my creative practice in 2023

I am delighted to share that I have been awarded a Developing Your Creative Practice grant by Arts Council England. This grant will support me to research and write my next poetry book, CYMA, during 2023.

CYMA will investigate the military histories, climate futures and sensory ecologies of a specific site in Norfolk, through a neurodivergent/disabled lens. As part of the project I will be trying new research and writing techniques, and working with other creatives to help me find innovative ways to share the poems with audiences on the page, on stage, and online.

I have been scoping this project since 2018, and it’s hugely exciting to have the opportunity to bring this long-held dream to reality. I will be sharing my reflections as the project progresses in future posts. Stay tuned.

the other body is 1!

It’s been a year since my debut poetry pamphlet, the other body, was published by Guillemot Press, and I’m celebrating its birthday! We launched it on 14 October 2021 (video here). Here I am a little over a year ago, on the day I unwrapped my parcel of author copies and saw my book for the first time.

Flo Reynolds holds up a copy of their debut pamphlet, the other body (Guillemot Press, 2021). The book has a pink cover that has been designed to look like it has been nibbled by critters. Flo is a white person with long brown hair, wearing an orange top. They are standing in front of a brick wall and greenery.
Holding the other body in my hands for the first time. Image copyright (c) Perry Andrews, 2021.

It still feels surreal to have a physical book with my writing printed in it, especially one with such a beautiful design and illustrations by Phyllida Bluemel.

the other body was about five years in the writing. Not every poem in there was five years old when I submitted it to Luke and Sarah at Guillemot in late 2019, but it took that long for the ideas to coalesce, the poems to be written, the line by line editing, and then putting it into pamphlet shape.

I learned a lot from the process and it still fascinates me that the secret ingredient for any creative project is time. It can be a fine balance between acting quickly to keep momentum, and taking enough time for the project to emerge. Then, at the end, there’s the breathless, heart-swelling moment when you know it’s ready, and it’s time to stop working on that particular project. Time moves strangely in the writing.

Following the other body I’ve been hard at work on other projects. I have another pamphlet that is completed, and I’m working on my third. The latest pamphlet is born out of my interest in textiles and the teachers who taught me to knit, to spin, and weave when I was a teenager who thought they might have a career in design in future. And in the background I am planning my largest project to date, my debut poetry collection CYMA. I have scoped out the project over the last couple of years and I’m hoping that 2023 will be the year I can begin in earnest.

No matter the new projects, I still find myself sometimes taking my copy of the other body down from the shelf, reading it, or even just holding it. Wherever my writing life takes me, tob (as I call it for short) will always be my first published book. I’m amazed and delighted that it’s here, it’s beautiful and it’s real.

If you’d like to buy a copy of the book you can do so via Guillemot Press. To stay up to date with my writing, why not subscribe below or add my site to your old-skool RSS feed.

My NCW highlights

Today is my last day of working at National Centre for Writing. It’s been ten years since I first interned there, six years since I joined the core team, and two since I took on the role of Programme Manager.

During my time at NCW I’ve run festivals, international symposia, and literally hundreds of events. I’ve met the most amazing people, from talented early career writers to superstars like Margaret Atwood, and fellow literature professionals from all over the world.

It’s been a blast and I’m sad to be leaving, though I’m excited for my new chapter. I’ll still be working in the arts and culture sector, including growing my freelance writing-facilitating-producing practice.

This post is a look back at just some of my innumerable personal highlights from the last six years. Thanks to all the writers, readers and colleagues who have made these experiences so special and memorable, and here’s to an exciting future of collaborations and creativity to come.

The Quiet, 2017

On a train back from the Escalator Showcase 2017, I spitballed the idea that we could produce Carys Davies’ short story “The Quiet” as a dance piece. This would be for Story Machine‘s interactive literature extravaganza during NCW and Norfolk & Norwich Festival‘s joint City of Literature programme. To my surprise Sam Ruddock, director of Story Machines, accepted this idea and ran with it, turning it into beautiful reality with the help of Glasshouse Dance.

It was a pleasure to assist on this piece, a crash course in producing outdoor events, and a valuable lesson in not being afraid to share my ideas no matter how off-the-wall they may seem. As a curator/programmer, creative brainstorming is an essential skill, and one I really enjoy doing.

Writing Places, 2017-18

Another project on which I really cut my teeth, Writing Places was a project of creative exchange between writers, translators and photographers in the Norwich, UK and Kolkata, India.

I supported Kate Griffin, NCW’s Associate Programme Director, in producing and hosting two exchange visits as part of the programme. The first, in Norwich, took place in May 2017 and included a symposium and public events. The second, in Kolkata, was run in partnership with Kolkata Literary Meet and was my first taste in working internationally. You can read my blog about the Kolkata exchange here.

Kolkata Literary Meet, 2018

My work on Writing Places taught me the value of durational engagement, interdisciplinary approaches and intercultural communication, and I can’t thank Kate and the Writing Places participants and partners enough for this formative experience.

Escalator Showcase, 2022

Escalator is NCW’s flagship talent development programme that has supported over 150 writers at the start of their careers. Having supported the programme in the past, it was a privilege to take on its curation and management in 2021 and to put supporting under-represented writers at the heart of it.

I was lucky to share the experience with the most recent cohort, ten truly talented writers whom I know will go far. The video below shows their final showcase to agents, publishers and the wider writing community, hosted by yours truly.

Escalator 2022-23 is still open for entries until Monday 19th September. Escalator is open to under-represented fiction writers from the East of England region, and this year writers from global majority backgrounds and the LGBTQ+ community are especially encouraged to apply. Find out more and submit your application here.

You can support the Escalator programme and under-represented writers as part of NCW’s Escalator Needs Your Help campaign.

Wandering Words, 2022

In late 2021 I had another of my unlikely ideas: what if we celebrated Norwich’s ten years as a UNESCO City of Literature through a combination of words, sound, and place? Several months later Wandering Words was born.

The project features newly commissioned poems by Victoria Adukwei Bulley, Andy Bennett, Piers Harrison-Reid, Hannah Levene and Jessica Streeting, all of whom have a connection to the fine city. A team of students from Access Creative College composed original, professional-standard sound pieces responding to the poems. Commissioned by Norfolk & Norwich Festival and National Centre for Writing, and curated and produced by me, Wandering Words launched online, in print and via in-person walking tours during the City of Literature festival 2022.

You can still enjoy and experience Wandering Words, both online and by picking up a map around the city. Whether you’re visiting Norwich for the day, or are looking for a new perspective on your local haunts, I wish you happy wandering.

International Literature Showcase, 2021

2021 saw me take on one of my biggest challenges to date: curating and producing the International Literature Showcase programme, alongside colleagues at British Council. Bringing together literature professionals from across the world with UK writers, the ILS facilitates new writing, best practice and international exchange in literature.

This was the first symposium I had run online and it presented a series of new logistical challenges. Luckily the brilliant company and creativity of our writers and delegates more than made up for the fact that we couldn’t all be in the same room together.

The commissioned articles, discussions, events and a keynote speech by the one and only Joy Francis offer incisive perspectives on where literature is now and where we might be headed. In particular I highly recommend this international look at innovation and enterprise in the sector with Molly Flatt, Goretti Kyomuhendo and Claire Mabey.

The ILS continues through a series of seed-funded projects pairing UK and overseas partners, and a forthcoming higher education resource pack. Find out more and access the ILS resources here.

The Writing Life podcast interviews

Last but not least, I’ve been lucky enough to interview many writers for NCW’s The Writing Life podcast. It’s impossible to choose a single favourite author or interview, but I’m especially proud of my interviews with Jenn Ashworth, Lynn Buckle and Kendel Hippolyte.

I’ve also been interviewed myself on the podcast about the NCW Book Club, which I started in 2020, and for my guide to getting your poetry published. Find out more and listen to the latest episodes of The Writing Life here.

 

It’s the end of an era for my time at National Centre for Writing, but a new chapter is just beginning. I will continue to innovate in literature and writer development as I build my freelance practice.

To book me for freelance work, commissions and events, please contact me on hello [at] floreynolds [dot] com or via the contact page.

To find out more about my work as a writer, facilitator and producer going forward, why not connect with me on Twitter or sign up for email updates:

Watch the launch of the other body

Back in 2021 I launched my debut poetry book, the other body, and I’m delighted that the launch is now available to relive and enjoy on YouTube.

It’s always nerve-wracking launching a book, and given the Covid-19 pandemic things were even stranger. We decided to launch online and to my surprise it really worked. Somehow Luke and Sarah at Guillemot Press managed to make the event feel intimate and creative, even though it was on Zoom! Big thanks to them both, as well as my co-launchers Petals and Clarissa, and the live audience who made it such a fun event to be a part of. I had some beautiful questions to answer from the audience and it was a pleasure to present my work in this way.

You can watch the event below or here – I hope you enjoy!

I wrote the book over the course of several years from about 2015. In it I explore ecology and how we as humans relate to different beings, including compost heaps, snails and slime moulds, to name just a few. At the heart of the book is the titular sequence of short, playful lyrics, although during the event I also enjoyed reading a couple of the longer single poems, including a real tongue-twister.

Over the past nine months it has been really exciting to see readers engage with my work in book form for the first time. The launch event was definitely one of my favourite readings I’ve ever done – though it won’t be the last!

I hope you enjoy the video of me reading of some of the poems. the other body is available for purchase via Guillemot Press. If you’d prefer a signed copy, I have a few copies left so please contact me to let me know you’d like one. I can ship anywhere in the world. And stay tuned for my online store coming soon, where you can purchase my work and resources for writers… watch this space!

the other body reviewed

Recently my debut poetry book, the other body, has received some good reviews. I’m really glad to know that it has connected with readers so far, and it’s fascinating to see the different facets and interpretations that people are picking up on.

Reviewing the other body on his blog, Billy Mills notices the search for a sense of wholeness, and (to my delight) engages with the use of Welsh language and myth in the book. Billy writes:

Reynolds’ work here is profoundly ecopoetic, an attempt to integrate the world in verse. […] This is my first encounter with their work, and I look forward to more.

You can read the rest of Billy’s review here.

Jennifer A. McGowan remarks on themes of bodies, love and divinity in Sphinx. She writes:

These are natural, scientific bodies, but the reader feels (at times uncomfortably) as if it’s their own body, too. The ‘you’ of ‘Hello Stranger’ becomes the ‘stranger of clay and cloth’, attempting to love — to make love, to construct it and examine it — in the forest. Doing so, the poet draws the reader (‘you’) into her poetic ‘I’; acknowledges the reader as an other, necessary, body.

You can read the rest of Jennifer’s review here.

Big thanks to both Billy and Jennifer for taking the time to share their readings of my book. the other body is available from Guillemot Press, and if you’d like to read it you can buy it here.

the other body out in the world

My debut book of poems, the other body, is now published and available from Guillemot Press.

Written in conversation with snails, slime moulds and spookfish, the other body sees me explore inter-species relationships and the ways in which the human body is inextricable from worlds beyond its perception. By turns playful and contemplative, the central sequence coalesces and disassembles into something like love poems, equally for creatures embodied in “tissue + rib + aura” and those whose forms are wondrously different.

The book has been beautifully designed and illustrated by Phyllida Bluemel, and features a ‘nibbled’ Tintoretto Ceylon front cover. Huge thanks to Phyllida and to Luke and Sarah of Guillemot for bringing the book to life!

I will be reading from the other body at a joint launch event with Petero Kalulé (petals) and Clarissa Álvarez on Thursday 14 October 2021. The event is free and takes place on Zoom. You can register your attendance here.