Dear Friend

It is wonderful to step outside the rhythms of everyday life and immerse ourselves in creativity and friendship. In the August Poetry Party we read and wrote under the influence of my dear friend Holly Wren Spaulding, as well as Ada Limón, Jacqueline Suskin, Tracy K. Smith, Li-Young Lee, and Dorianne Laux. Our final prompt was under the influence of another dear friend, James Crews.

The theme of this month is Dear Friend, after the title of a poem by Holly Wren Spaulding from her tender collection Between Us, a collection steeped in the form of epistolary poems. There is something tender about writing to one person. A letter assumes a closeness: that somewhere, beyond the page, there is a particular person who will recognise the small things you mean—the name you almost didn’t say, the afternoon you still remember, the thing you never quite managed to tell them.

Epistolary poems live in that space between presence and absence. They can be addressed to someone we love, someone we miss, someone we have lost, someone we barely know, or even someone we are still becoming. The “dear friend” of a poem does not have to answer. Perhaps that is part of its intimacy: the page allowing us speak without knowing what will come back.

Dates for Your Diary

The next Poetry Party is on Saturday 19th September, 4pm - 6pm UK time. Pop it in your diary now and join us for a sweet slice of life. And, if you want a whole week immersed in pleasure and poetry, join us at:

The Green Oracle Writers Retreat | 19th - 25th October 2026

What if saying YES to life meant a week in the Algarve—writing, swimming, feasting, wandering, laughing, and being beautifully looked after in the company of poet-friends? A few spaces remain. Dare to risk your yes.

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In the July Poetry Party, we read and wrote under the influence of Nina Cassian, Kerry Hardie, Jasmine Cooray, Nancy Campbell, Tracy K. Smith, Joyce Sutphen, Carl Phillips, Nicole Sealey, January Gill O'Neil and Aiyana Masla.

Together, we wandered through wildflowers and weeds, inheritance and memory, the recipes we were given and the ones we had to invent for ourselves. We paid close attention to sound, allowing it to sharpen our other senses, and we followed the ordinary details of family life until they opened into something else...

This month I'm sharing these prompts, poems and glimpses of what emerged as a gift, because they offer a little window into what the Poetry Party offers, and perhaps you’ve been wondering whether this is a space you’d like to join.

Every month, the theme become an invitation—and it's always astonishing to see where this lead. The most unexpected memories, images and poems seem to find their way from the body to the page. What begins with wildflowers, weeds or an old family recipe somehow unfolds into a poem no-one could have predicted. That's the magic of the Poetry Party: writing with poet-friends, discovering what has been waiting for you, and leaving with a poem (or pages and pages of poems) that only you could have written. You will discover your authentic voice in this space, that’s my gift.

If you've ever been curious about joining us, I hope this blog post gives you a sense of the kind of surprises that await. For now, grab yourself a cup of something summer-lovely, get your notebook, your favourite pen and put all other distractions to the side, and taste this sweet slice of life.

Welcome to the afterparty!

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I Promise…

To warm up, imagine that the world is writing a love letter to you in this moment. It is a private encounter, an intimate exchange. Imagine the world as your lover and write in their voice, repeating the phrase, I promise to... as you explore what the world might want to say to you.

Take 5 minutes.

Sitting in Weeds

World of Wildflowers

In this next writing prompt, we are going to address a ‘you’ in your poem, by thinking of one person you are speaking to. So first of all, write down the name of that person. First thought, best thought.

Writing Prompt

• Begin with an object that reminds you of that person.

• Where would you find that object?

• Mention a colour.

• Use the phrase as if.

• Mention the person’s face.

• Include a sound.

• Use the word lately.

• What have you found in unexpected places? Make a list of three.

• Mention an emotion.

• Use the phrase your world and move your language towards a metaphor.

Recipe for [You Decide]

Writing Prompt

Write a recipe for planting something—perhaps in an unexpected place—flowers, vegetables, or even a life. Maybe you will take inspiration from something you have seen recently, such as a welly boot filled with flowers, a polytunnel, a hanging basket, or lavender sprouting between piano keys. Think about each step, write some instructions. You might begin with the practical and let it drift somewhere unexpected. You also might like to use the words: fill, plant, small, roots, and water in your recipe.

Take 7 minutes.

No Recipes to Inherit

This poem is by January Gill O’Neil.

Before you begin writing, give yourself a few quiet minutes—close over the petals of your eyes and let yourself drift back through the home you grew up in. Think about the people who raised you and the ordinary patterns of family life. What habits, routines and beliefs shaped your days? What did your family do well? Where were the shortcomings? What did everyone seem to accept as normal? What did you once promise yourself you would do differently? As memories come, open your journal and make notes. Then close your eyes again. Write down the small, concrete details: family sayings, recipes, household rituals, forgotten birthdays, burnt toast, unfinished DIY projects, impractical gifts, the things that were always lost, always fixed, always argued over or always laughed about. Don’t worry about making sense of it all yet. Just collect the material that still has a pulse. The poem will grow from here.

Writing Prompt

Maybe your mother never cooked. Maybe your family always arrived late, overwatered houseplants, burnt the toast, bought impractical gifts, never finished DIY jobs, refused to ask for directions, forgot birthdays, hoarded ridiculous things. Write a poem about what you have chosen to carry forward and what you have chosen to leave behind. Fill it with concrete examples/memories, by drawing from your notes. What will you pass on differently? How will you compare notes, experiences, perhaps even recipes?

During the Poetry Party, poets found themselves writing about what their mum packed in the packed lunch box for their dad, and about TV dinners, how they seemed like a treat. One poet wrote about how, whenever her mother was going through the bills, she threw things on the floor, and also how she had all the peelings in the sink. Another poet spoke beautifully about interlacing prayers and nursery rhymes recalled from childhood, mingling this with memories. One poet wrote about her mother baking scones, particularly about how her "cold hands didn't match who she is," reflecting on that point in time when her soft, young hands hardened, and how those cold hands were great for baking pastries and scones. Tears were shed as one poet reflected on time—returning to childhood and being with themselves in the ways they weren’t met as a child. It was deeply moving to hear all of what emerged from body, memory and then, onto the page.

Take a short Pleasure Pause

Soundings

Write down any associations you made whilst reading this poem. These are just notes to yourself that may weave their way into future writing.

Writing Prompt

• Begin with the sounds coming through the window/space.

• Mention the weather.

• Mention a body part.

• Include a colour and a flower.

• Mention a room in your house.

• Add in more sound.

• Use the word, somewhere.

• Take a leap.

• Leave things unresolved.

Writing Prompt

What weed have you encountered this summer? Write about it. Include the words: weed, summer, day, body and now.

Take 5 minutes.

The Long Write

I have written several poems under the influence of this next poem. Let everything we’ve written before weave its way back into this prompt if it wants to, naturally, or write something completely new. I’ll give you a few instructions, and your job is to keep pen to page. Don’t stop to explain, don’t second-guess—just follow where the ink takes you. I want you to write until the words have wrung themselves out of you. I want you not to know where they will lead you. I want you to experience surprise. I want you to have to shake your hand by the end of this 15 minutes.

But first, read the poem—slowly—and preferably out loud.

Below, when I say: include a symbol, remember it doesn’t have to be an asterisk * You might want to try using a symbol as part of the poem itself. You could include:

→
←
>>
<<
&
/
~
∞
#
+
×
( )
[ ]
:
…
?
!

or something else.

Play with it. You can always change it later. Consider how the symbol adds meaning, creates a pause, shows connection, or becomes part of the poem’s voice. For example, I recently used >> and << to create movement through time, jumping back into my parents’ relationship (from a photograph I was writing about) and then forward into my present. A symbol can become part of the poem’s structure, helping the reader navigate memories, shifts and leaps.

Writing Prompt

• Begin with the word, today.

• Ask a question.

• Repeat the phrase let us, at least twice.
  
  Include a symbol (and begin a new stanza each time I prompt this).
  

• Mention the sky.

• Use the word, there…

• Add light/darkness, the moon/sun and the month.
  
  Include a symbol.
  

• Use the word clueless.

• Use the words living and dying.

• Use the word and.
  
  Include a symbol.
  

• Ask a series of questions one after another.

• Add a name. Reflect on that name.
  
  Include a symbol.
  

• Add a bird.

• Use the word I.

• What did you see?
  
  Include a symbol.
  

• Make a confession.
  
  Include a symbol.
  

• Use the following phrases:

  I learned… I was… I am… and one day…
  
  Include a symbol.
  

• What is love like?

  
  Include a symbol.
  

• Write a stanza in 30 seconds including at least three of these words:
  enough, remember, things, town, lust, suck, honey, why
  
  Include a symbol.
  

• Ask a question.

• Make a promise.
  
  Include a symbol.
  

• Use the word after.

• Add moon, flower or sky.

• Say something you’re doing right now.

& After

Now, a poem by Aiyana Masla to complete.

Announcements

The next Poetry Party will be on Saturday 22nd of August, 4pm - 6pm UK time.

The Green Oracle Writers Retreat

If The Green Oracle has been calling to you from the edges of your imagination, consider this your invitation to answer. There’s now just one room left—could it be yours? If you’ve been longing for a week of poetry, beauty, conversation, sunshine, sea air, and creative renewal, I’d love to hear your wholehearted YES before that final room disappears. And if you’re already coming, perhaps there’s a poet-friend, writer, or kindred spirit who’s meant to be there too. Send them a note and invite them along. Some of the most memorable retreat stories begin with one poet-friend saying,
“Come with me.”

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Thank you for being here, I hope you played all the games and had all the fun.

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Somehow it’s June, and we are leaning into the light: the long evenings are lingering, there’s a cocktail glass full of Scottish strawberries, one poet is holding a cherry by the stem, it is glistening. There is tenderness in writing a love note to a sister and each of us are composing a Postcard to June, as though the month itself might write back…

And this is the light that arrives
despite everything. It is the most light.
It will happen more often than you expect.

—Summer Solstice by Alex Dimitrov

We spoke of the wonder of crickets crossing the road, shadows drifting over the bay, rainbows appearing and dissolving, the neon-white blaze of gannets, the way the tide abandons seaweed along the shore only to gather it back into itself hours later.

There are things we don’t want explained, because explanation would thin the spell.

Together we remained inside the mystery, letting one small thing open into something larger. Wildflowers scented our pages. Our poems and prompts were steeped in gold of pleasure, cornflower blue, veronica, foxglove, stocks, fine flower, toad flax, astrantia, lady’s mantle (holding the memory of jewelled raindrops). There was canary grass, sweet rocket, delphinium, snapdragons (in the most glorious rainbow tie-dye), limonium, suworowii, knautia and dahlia, all thanks to Martha at Blossoms Wildly.

Flowers became fields where we laid out a picnic in our imagination, and we feasted on what is ripe this season.

During the June Poetry Party, we read and wrote under the influence of Alice Oswald, Jen Hadfield, Annie Lighthart, Alice Wolf Gilborn, Linda Gregg, Amy Dryansky, Heather Swan, Alex Dimitrov, Alec Finlay and Niall Campbell.

The next Poetry Party is on Saturday 11th July from 4pm - 6pm UK time and I would love for you to join us. Each month there is a follow-up blog with all of the poems and prompts included so that you can linger in that field a little longer.

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This June Morning

Walking Past a Rose This June Morning by Alice Oswald

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I knew I was experimenting with an injury, and new territory means having the discipline in thinking through all the contributing factors, with an eye to the future, because of course I am hungry to do better next time.

It is May, my mantlepiece is full of wildflowers (freesia, bunny tails, broome, foxglove, poppyhead, stock, scilla, chrysanthemum, pinks, dill leaf and many more). The cuckoo is singing sonnets to a blue sky. The marsh marigold are so yellow, they are giving me faith that things will get brighter. I have hope, which is a radical thing.

Between preparing for the Poetry Party and preparing for The Blue Shore Writers Retreat (which begins later this month) my life is abundant in poetry, and what a blessing that is. My mornings are spent reading. My afternoons, typing up poems for packets and parties. My evenings, editing. In the space between, I live the poem, wandering to the shore to listen to what waves have to say, to watch gulls nest, eagles hunt, wagtails do their wagtail thing. My partner and children have been fishing every day this week. They never catch anything, but don’t seem to mind. We all refuse the rush. We are living on island time. Poetry time. Plenty of time. This is real wealth.

Despite everything, there is still so much beauty. Find it. Invite it. Make it. Discover it. Protect it. Share it. Let beauty soften you. Hold onto wonder. Notice the small moments that remind you life is alive with meaning. Be the kind of presence that leaves warmth and bluebells in the hands of another human. These are the moments that make a life. This is the poetry! There is so much goodness and so much to be grateful for.

In our May Poetry Party, we read and wrote under the influence of Joyce Sutphen, Barbara Crooker, Victoria Chang, Megan Fernandes, Sarah Ruhl, Marjorie Saiser, Jenny George, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Zeina Hashem Beck and David Budbill.

The next Poetry Party will be on Saturday 13th June (4pm - 6pm UK time). I would love to host you and share a sweet slice of life together.

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From The Pivot Year by Brianna Wiest

The April Poetry Party opened in that way the invited the body to turn toward living, to turn toward the light. Just like a flower opening, it was a soft start, a gentle unfurling, a heart-opener. It continued with a circle, a shape with no edges, no urgency. Poets were asked to trust what arrived (rose or rosemary) and to let it speak. Memory and feeling formed in fragments and images. We were reminded by poet-friend Cynthia Henebry:

there is nothing living
that is not communicating

something.

To turn toward living, it seems, is to pay attention, to listen, and to make space on the page for the words to open from the body like flowers. The poems opened into surprising shapes and colours: longing, theft, moments and memories that live within us waiting for a chance to green the page. We stole rose bushes from abandoned gardens, and wrote cures for life’s ailments in just two lines. We wrote in fragments and stitched them together with numbers, allowing leaps.

Ordinary things become luminous when we pay attention: to what we eat, what we touch, what we carry, what we hear. By the end, we returned to the circle to place something inside: a line, a fragment, something to remind us about turning toward living.

In the April Poetry Party we read and wrote under the influence of: Cynthia Henebry, Jane Hirshfield, Billy Collins, Alec Finlay, Wendy Cope, Niall Campbell and Nancy Lustgarten. Deep gratitude to all the poets in my circle and in the circle of the world.

The next Poetry Party is on: Saturday 9th May, 4pm - 6pm UK time.

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In the March Poetry Party, we read and wrote under the influence of Leila Chatti, Alex Dimitrov, Hannah Emerson, Isabella DeSendi, January Gill O’Neil, Louise Glück, Kristen Case, and Terri Kirby Erickson. We explored the Brutal Beauty of spring, paying attention to what is blooming, what is breaking, to everyday pleasures and the things we love. We wrote our own odes to women in spring, and made space for laughter alongside the lines. We travelled to the echoes of childhood and arrived fully in the present moment. The next Poetry Party is on 11th April 2026, 4pm - 6pm UK time. Join us!

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What Matters

What Matters by Terri Kirby Erickson

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We Are Horses is a four week poetry bender inspired by Joy Harjo’s collection she had some horses in the Year of the Fire Horse. This is a season for momentum, shine, and forward motion. Over the month of March, we move with intention, instinct, and in conversation with the horses. The work is micro and manageable: expect short bursts of writing, tight revision windows, and achievable goals. It is a glitter kicking, mane braiding, gathering of women and poets, who are ready to gallop into this new lunar year. We begin today, on 2nd March, you can still sign up, and because I am still travelling home, it is still at early bird price. Join me.

Wow—our February Poetry Party was a gallop, with pens moving, pages filling, and poem after poem finding its way towards us from the green fields of our imagination.

To open White Horses, we began by listening to Seas by Juan Ramón Jiménez (in translation by Robert Bly) from one of my favourite anthologies, Poetry of Presence. We paired it with Vault by the Scottish poet Jackie Kay—a perfect poem for this moment. Our writing was guided by the fierce clarity of Kathleen Jamie and Norman MacCaig, and after a short ‘Pleasure Pause’ we turned to the poet-queen, Lucille Clifton, imagining a message from the “crazy horse.” We went full gallop into the luminous work of Ada Limón and Jane Hirshfield. Also, threaded throughout our Poetry Party was the voice of Joy Harjo, especially from her collection she had some horses—the inspiration behind my March offering, which is called We Are Horses.

This course is designed to fit into a full life, with small, manageable prompts; a weekly email; two live workshops; and one celebration. No heavy coursework or printouts (apart from one game to accompany you throughout the month).

Early bird for We Are Horses ends tomorrow (Tuesday 24th February).

The next Poetry Party takes place on Saturday 28th March, I’d love you to join us.

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We Are Horses

We Are Horses is a four week poetry bender inspired by Joy Harjo’s collection she had some horses in the Year of the Fire Horse. This is a season for momentum, shine, and forward motion. Over the month of March, we move with intention, instinct, and in conversation with the horses. The work is micro and manageable: expect short bursts of writing, tight revision windows, and achievable goals. It is a glitter kicking, mane braiding, gathering of women and poets, who are ready to gallop into this new lunar year. Read more about it here.In the New Life

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We Are Horses

We Are Horses is a four week poetry bender inspired by Joy Harjo’s collection she had some horses in the Year of the Fire Horse. This is a season for momentum, shine, and forward motion. Over the month of March, we move with intention, instinct, and in conversation with the horses. The work is micro and manageable: expect short bursts of writing, tight revision windows, and achievable goals. It is a glitter kicking, mane braiding, gathering of women and poets, who are ready to gallop into this new lunar year.

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