Enter the pod

I recently wrote a post about where my ideas come from and I'm pretty surprised I didn't mention podcasts once - I am a huge fan of the medium; it’s replaced TV as my primary form of entertainment and I ramble on about them to anyone who will listen. I think they’re a great resource for writers in the work they provide and the way it is provided.

There are a number of programmes focussed on writing and literature. The Penguin Podcast, The Poetry Society and TLS Voices are some of my favourites. If you don’t mind adding ever more titles to your “to read” pile (which I don't), I also recommend Robin and Josie’s Book Shambles, in which comedians Robin Ince and Josie Long interview a public figure about their favourite books in a way that is both erudite and wittily accessible.

I listen to a number of factual programmes – Radio 4’s The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry is a favourite, as is Dan Snow’s History Hit. Another great podcast for history is Lore, which looks at folklore, mysteries and the more gruesome side of the past. I admit, I’m a lifelong nerd and I love to learn new things, and I glean new ideas for writing from the information I gather. 

Podcasts are the perfect medium for long form interviews, which provide insight into people's lives and allow you to hear the patterns underlying conversation. I love the Nerdist Podcast and Scroobius Pip's Distraction Pieces is always entertaining and informative. The warmth and humour of both Richard Herring’s Leicester Square Theatre Podcast and The Adam Buxton Podcast often lead to some brilliant insights. A lot of comedians have podcasts and I’ve always felt that comedians have a lot in common with poets, both are looking for the surprise hidden in words. For rambling conversation in the Peter Cook and Dudley Moore vein, it’s hard to beat Frankie Boyle and Glenn Wool’s Freestyle but topical and issue-based shows such as The Bugle, The Guilty Feminist and Citizen Radio combine humour and current events in a way that will make you think differently (and laugh). Citizen Radio is also worth a mention for the moving and honest way the two hosts address difficult issues such as mental health and the challenges of living a creative life - the fact that they achieve this whilst also being funny is a testament to their skills as creative people.

There are also some great fictional podcasts – the No Sleep podcast brings excellent production values to short stories. Both The Black Tapes Podcast and Welcome to Night Vale present serial drama in a way that is deliciously addictive with creative plots and engaging characters. In fact, these podcasts are responsible for my latest entirely unreasonable crushes on fictional characters (I'm looking at you, Dr Strand and Carlos with the perfect hair) which I think is testament to the quality of the writing. These productions engage my imagination and remind me of the power of words; both of these are vital for a writer.

One of my recent favourites is The Parapod. Comedians Ray Peacock and Barry Dodds consider cases of the paranormal; one is a cynic and the other a believer. The result is not only funny enough to have me crying with laughter, but also the way Peacock structures his arguments against the fantastic concepts serves as a very good reminder to writers that with every flight of fancy, you must keep at least one foot on the ground to convince your reader. It is probably worth having Ray Peacock’s voice of reason in your head when you’re looking to fix plot holes or tie some concepts together.

There are many things I love about podcasts and many reasons why I find them inspiring. I think some exciting and creative work is being created in this form and it is also, in most cases, entirely listener supported through subscriptions, donations and pledges via Patreon or Kickstarter. Audiences do connect with the power of words and are willing to support high quality and creative work - that is a hopeful thought. If, like me, you’re a podcast fan, I hope you’re supporting this vibrant new source of brilliant writing because I want this medium to survive and thrive. The creators of these podcasts deserve to be paid for their work in order to keep going. If nothing else, how else will I trick myself into doing housework?

Ada Lovelace Day

Ada Lovelace Day is a celebration of women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) and should be applauded as such. However, Ada is also an inspirational figure for women in the arts - and poets in particular.

She is credited as the world’s first computer programmer for her theories on “poetical science” and was described in this article as “the first person to marry the mathematical capabilities of computational machines with the poetic possibilities of symbolic logic applied with imagination.” If you are interested to know more, Sydney Padua’s graphic novel about Lovelace and Charles Babbage is as entertaining as it is informative.

It is not just her significant intellectual achievements that make her an admirable figure for poets. The daughter of the unhappily married Lord and Lady Byron, Ada embraced both her parents’ interests, while they themselves used them against each other. Her mother, Annabella Milbanke, was gifted in mathematics and after the relationship soured due to Byron’s repeated and rather dubious infidelities, he railed against her. He called her a “Mathematical Medea” and referenced her in Don Juan with the contemptuous lines “Her favourite science was the mathematical… She was a walking calculation.”

In fact, Ada herself was the walking calculation. In marrying mathematics and poetry, she managed to both appease and defy her parents. It is the sort of infuriating rebellion that is so cleverly constructed that it is beyond reproach. The contrarian in me loves her for that alone. Poets should embrace contradiction and look for ways to create tension in their writing because poetry is a living, breathing art and reflects human interests and frailties. If a novelist presents characters as either “all good” or “all bad”, they become two-dimensional and often readers lose interest. In the same way, showing something of Ada’s spirit of rebellion in poetry can only enrich it, raise questions and place the answers just beyond reach and address the many contradictions of human behavior.

Lovelace believed that machines would become partners of the human imagination. My advice is to take a creative journey with Lovelace herself -  as partners in imagination go, she is a most inspiring travelling companion.

Winchester Poetry Festival

After such an amazing weekend in Winchester, waking up this morning without a schedule of poetry to look forward to feels like such a disappointment. I’m sitting in the kitchen with my coffee as I try to acclimatise back to the real world and I really don’t want to.

Last Friday was the Chalk Poets event; the fear of reading my work to an audience was tempered first by seeing the beautiful Chalk Poets anthology and then by seeing family and friends in the audience. It was still utterly terrifying – I am told I appeared confident and that I read well, but my brain seems to have wiped the whole experience. I remember the wonderful work of my fellow contributors, walking up to the lectern and the relief of sitting down again. I have at least learned that public readings are nothing to fear, and I hope I can do it again. I am so very grateful to Stephanie Norgate for providing me with such a wonderful opportunity.

My Saturday began with a talk by Simon Armitage and Pip Hall on the Stanza Stones project; it was fascinating to hear about the process and heart-warming to know how valued the stones are in the local communities. Next on my schedule was a reading by Frances Leviston, Shazea Qurashi and Deryn Rees-Jones. What struck me in these readings was the incredible clarity and conviction with which each writer presented their work; there was a lot to admire and aspire to in this session. This was also true of the following session from Dr Choman Hardi, Sinead Morrisey and Bernard O'Donoghue. In both this and the previous session, the personal and the political, or public, spheres collided in new and inventive ways. In the evening, the Watcher of the Skies event with Simon Armitage, Mimi Khalvati and Helen Mort was sublime; three perfectly pitched readings which sent me back to my hotel in a reverie of words. I couldn’t sleep for quite a while after that, I think I was afraid to close my eyes and end the magic spell that had been cast.

On Sunday, I watched the results announced for the Winchester Poetry Prize in awe of the huge talent and variety displayed in the short-listed and prize-winning poems; judge Mimi Khalvati also threw in an invaluable lesson or two on the composition of poetry for everyone in the audience. Magma Editor Jon Sayers’ interview with Jo Shapcott offered a fascinating insight into her writing and was so well pitched, revealing without being invasive and clearly presenting the idea that inspiration is everywhere if we know how to recognise it. (It also totally legitimises my habit of poking around second hand bookshops for new gems… I do need all those books, like I’ve always said. Thanks for that, Jo.) Nicolas Roe’s lecture on Keats in Winchester provided a vivid and fresh perspective on one of Keats’ best-loved poems and provided an insight into the life and work of an exceptional writer. I was also rather thrilled to learn he stayed in the building that is now the hotel I was staying in for the weekend; I can only hope some Keats magic seeped into the walls and wafted over me while I slept. The Complete Works session had readings from Inua Ellams (displaying poise I can only dream of as he took requests from audience members on what topics to address in his reading), Sarah Howe, whose reading demonstrated all the qualities that made Loop of Jade so deserving of the TS Eliot Prize and Kei Miller, who had the audience rapt; I’m sure I’m not the only person who shed a tear when he read a quiet poem about his father. The whole session underscored something that I really loved about the festival; there was a huge amount of diversity in the poets attending the event. The performance theatre was packed out regardless of the gender, age, class or race of the readers. I hope the Winchester Poetry Festival shares the pictures of those attentive audiences far and wide, reminding the literary establishment that the only thing that matters in poetry is the beauty of the words and more must be done, as in Winchester, to remove barriers to writers from minorities because our language and culture are richer for their contribution.

The festival was closed by Tim Dee and Roger McGough, talking about the beloved Radio 4 programme Poetry Please and with McGough reading some of his work. This was an emotional one for me because as I’ve said before on this blog, Roger McGough is the reason I first fell in love with poetry. For me, he’s inextricably linked to my Dad, who used to read his poems to me and we’d laugh together and share a real love of the magic of words. My Dad died two years ago and although McGough was warm and witty on stage, I had tears in my eyes a few times during that session because I couldn’t stop thinking how much Dad would have loved to have been there, how we would have stared at each other in amazement that there he was, the man who had brought us both so much joy. I did get the chance to thank Roger for that, and he signed my most beloved McGough story, a strange picture book called Mr Noselighter that my Dad could recite from memory right up until the day he died because it was so often requested. I cried all the way home; since my Dad died I don’t think he’s felt closer than he did in that theatre, or so very far away.

My Dad filled my head with words and nonsense and he helped to make me the poet I am today; Winchester Poetry Festival demonstrated that he was right to do so. Poetry matters, and matters an awful lot, to a lot of people. I’m sorry that my Dad missed that last session, he would have loved it so much. I reconcile his loss much the same way that I will acclimatise back to the real world after such a wonderful weekend in Winchester. The scope and scale of the reconciliation is vastly different of course, but in both cases I’m left with all those beautiful words, words, words and the magic spell they will continue to weave over my life.

Happy National Poetry Day

Today is not only National Poetry Day, it is also my nephew’s 9th birthday. This may seem less significant to you than it is to me, but in truth the latter can tell us something about the value of the former.

National Poetry Day (NPD) is an initiative of the Forward Arts Foundation; the stated aim of the day is to promote the enjoyment, discovery and sharing of poetry. In short, it’s a day when we make it clear that we value the fact that poetry exists in the world and what is a birthday if not a day to celebrate a person who we are glad to share the planet with?

I think for poets, today is something of a vindication. It’s a chance to show off all that we care about and prove that we’re not (entirely) mad to have chosen to spend our days in the pursuit of the perfect line, the most fitting word or the most dramatic line break. On your birthday, presents are chosen for you, and they represent your own tastes and interests. In both cases, it’s a chance to celebrate the unique, to honour the weird little star of something that matters to us.

I suppose the day also goes some way to addressing whether poetry matters. For me, of course it does, but I think that it does for everyone. Even people with only a passing interest in literature may seek out a poem when facing extremes of emotion – at a wedding, for example, or a funeral. When the heart breaking photos of refugees reaching Europe were published by news outlets, poems such as Home, by Somali poet Warsan Shire were shared widely on social media because somehow, the words “no one leaves home unless / home is the mouth of a shark” could articulate something that we found it hard to wrap our minds around. I was struck, also, that the Chilcot Report on the enquiry into the Iraq war quoted Virgil’s Aeneid, as if there were things that needed to be said that only a poet could say.

People may turn to poetry in times of extreme emotion but the truth is, the magic of words can be used at any time to make us feel happy or sad, take us to new worlds and find new words to articulate our experience. In the same way, I may take the opportunity to show my nephew just how much I love him on his birthday, but I love him every day of the year. NPD goes some way to demonstrating that you don’t have to wait until you are at a loss for other words to reach for poetry, just as you should never, ever wait to tell someone how much you love them.

I wondered, when I started this post, whether I could actually tie National Poetry Day with my nephew Jack’s birthday. In writing about them together, I feel I understand both a little better. Just like a birthday, National Poetry Day is a chance to celebrate something special that we value. Just like poetry, Jack shows immense kindness and a real curiosity about the world. Celebrating both together fits a lot better than I imagined. I am looking forward to discovering new writers amongst the poems shared today and equally I can’t wait to see my nephew and present him with the bag of gifts I’ve chosen for him. There are some books in there that I know we’re going to love reading together.

It’s time to play the music, it’s time to light the lights…

I’m reading some of my work at the Winchester Poetry Festival later this week and I am terrified. My work in marketing means I have plenty of practice in public speaking and it never really phases me. However, the idea of standing in front of a discerning poetry audience - on stage with what I consider to be the real grown-ups - I am scared I’ll get laughed at, found out or perhaps struck with a case of situational Tourettes Syndrome. Intellectually, I know they are unfounded fears but in my heart, there remains a nagging terror that I can’t quite excise.

The circumstance reminds me of the time I read a poem at the wedding of one of my best friends. Although the work wasn’t mine, I felt such pressure to get it right. I was confident in the poem I’d chosen but still, to stand in front of the congregation immediately after the fateful pronouncement of “husband and wife” seemed like a monumental task. I practised until I could recite the work without the words in front of me (I practised so much, in fact, that ten years later I still can) and until I knew how the poem worked. Reading my own work, then, I should be at an advantage – I already know all the workings, how it moves and breathes across the page.

In the end, the reading at the wedding went very well and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. That is mostly down to the situation – I can’t imagine there has ever been a heckler during a reading at a wedding – but it is also because words have their own power and magic when spoken out loud. As a child, I was lucky enough to be read to by parents who also loved language and reading. No one could deliver a zany Roger McGough poem quite like my Dad, and no one ever will. He trusted in the writing, leaning into the humour of the situation and expressing the music in the language. My Dad died two years ago and it forms a little crack in my heart when I think of how he can’t be in Winchester to support me. In some way, he is the person I’m reading for at this festival; I want to honour all those bedtime stories delivered so impeccably. I want it to be perfectly clear that I did listen and it made all the difference in the world to me.

What does this mean for the reading at Winchester Poetry Festival? I can put a big tick next to column labelled practice, and although the situation is not as personal as a wedding or a child’s bedtime story, I’ll be reading in a creative, positive atmosphere so that’s another tick. Have I reasoned myself out of my fear?

Not quite - there is a third element and I think that might be the one where my fear resides. What the wedding reading and my Dad’s bedtime stories have in common are that they were carried out in love. At the wedding, I put my heart into what I was saying and when he read to me at night, Dad would make up the voices and accentuate the rhythms of the writing that would seem daft to the outside world but showed how much he, too, cared about the bedtime story. I know that at every good reading, the speaker lets the love pour out of them and that’s a vulnerable position to be in. Do I dare to stand on a stage and let all the love pour out of my mouth? Do I dare risk looking like a fool to share what’s truly in my heart and in my mind?

I am my father’s daughter – I have to.

The Wonder of the Workshop

This time last week I was packing for a weekend in London to attend a two-day poetry workshop organised by Poetry London and led by American poet Matthew Dickman. It was an intense weekend and it always takes time for me to allow my thoughts to settle in such situations. Over the course of the week, I’ve reflected often on the special magic that occurs in a creative workshop and just how much work can be produced in a short space of time. That makes me wonder just how it’s done and whether I can replicate that at home.

The first element to recognise is that the workshop was very well organised and held at the Poetry School - a short walk from Waterloo station - in a bright and airy room, well stocked with tea and coffee. I think these are all elements you can replicate at home – make an appointment with yourself to write and honour that. It is very easy to let this slip - there is always housework to do, demands from a boss, a partner or children, a friend you haven’t seen in a while – but there’s no real reason for this. Can you imagine, for example, telling your friend you can’t meet them as you’d promised because you have to finish washing your bath towels? If your friend is worth the commitment of time then so is your writing.

You can make sure in advance that you have everything you need to write and make sure that’s easy to achieve – for me, that’s a block of at least two hours to work, some instrumental music to shut out the rest of the world (current favourite is gypsy-jazz guitarist Remi Harris but I also recommend classical pianist James Rhodes for a more dramatic accompaniment) and a ready supply of coffee. I respect the time I’ve given myself the same way I make sure I achieve work deadlines or meet friends on time.

The second is the external input of new work. Over the course the weekend, Matthew Dickman demonstrated his great knowledge of modern poetry and opened my eyes to some wonderful writers. Again, this is something you can replicate at home, even if you don’t have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the current poetry scene. Sometimes I think coming at something completely new is an advantage: pick up an anthology or poetry magazine and choose a page at random; consider the poem in detail, what it can teach you and how you can apply that to your day’s writing.

Finally, the real magic of the workshop comes, I think, from the fact that there’s no backing out. There comes a point where everyone else in the room has their head down writing and you must follow them. It’s something like the adrenaline rush of an exam and harder to replicate at home. I think it helps to consider the fact that everyone in that circumstance is writing something new and that’s part of why the experience is so creative - that thought is liberating. It means when you sit down at home, you should remember that every writer  - even if they’re not next to you in a classroom - starts with a blank page and has to get their head down right now. There’s no pressure to be perfect or to hit the nail square on the head at the first try, you just have to keep writing.

I have carried more than these lessons with me from that workshop and I’ll include my thoughts on those later. Looking back on such an incredible creative weekend, I am glad to know I can take that feeling with me. There is a special kind of magic in the air at a workshop, for sure, but it is a form of practical magic that is always within reach.

All the world's a stage

Last weekend I went to an amazing workshop organised by Poetry London. It was such an intense two days that I’m still organising my thoughts, but while I was staying in London I also indulged in what might be considered extra-curricular activities and saw two plays. Although not a part of the official programme, these were as much a part of my weekend of learning as the classes.

Given that the workshop class considered the wildness of poetry, it seemed appropriate to choose to see The Libertine the same weekend. The production was gorgeous; artfully directed and well served by the beautiful Theatre Royal Haymarket as another aspect of the seductive musk of the whole play. The production, like Dominic Cooper in the lead role, walks the knife-edge between being repellent in its opulence and irresistibly charming. Like a recent production of Dr Faustus from the innovative Jamie Lloyd Company, the play uses humour to trap the audience in some very dark places. There is collusion between the actors and the audience in The Libertine; both have a role to play in telling a story. In poetry, the same is true. Although I think it’s a fool’s errand to try to write for an audience, I’m not sure how a poem exists without a reader who may choose their own perceived balance of dark and light if you put them both in contention.

If The Libertine used luxury to both conceal and reveal the rot underneath, the second play, Unfaithful, took a very different approach in a production stripped almost bare. In the small studio space, there was nothing but a bed and the rest of the surroundings were conjured from the language of the four characters. Much rests on the actors in a production like this; it really brings home both the talent and the hard work required to truly serve the words as they’re written. For me, it served as a reminder of the power of words spoken aloud - what we say, what we mean and everything created in the sound of language and the silence that sits between those words. Reading drafts of poems aloud is a very important part of the process for me – I record myself reading a draft and listen to it over and over – sometimes with the text in front of me, sometimes without, until I can pick out what is working and what isn’t.

The other aspect of the play that got me thinking was the way all the actors were on view all the time – if not participating in a scene, they sat blank-faced and waited. It made me think that every time I write a poem – make a noise in the world – all the poems there ever were and ever will be are there, waiting for their turn on the stage. Each poem is a break in the silence and becomes part of a conversation with a troop of impassive actors.

This is all by way of saying that I recommend both of these productions wholeheartedly and I don’t believe that my excursions were skiving from the primary purpose of taking a poetry class. In fact, the plays inspired me to new ideas, reminded me of the power of language and, as all good writing does, took me way from myself and brought me back somehow changed. I think it’s good for writers of all types to have it played out, in real life, exactly what we’re here for.

Where do you get your ideas from?

It’s become a clichéd question to ask a writer, and yet the answer can be fascinating. Every writer works differently; what is true for everyone is that you need to show up and write for any kind of inspiration to arise but where it arises from is the interesting part.

Research: some of my poems come from researching a particular topic, such as my recent MA Dissertation on the Roman invasion of Britain. I read books from and about the era, watched films and documentaries, visited ancient sites and museums. I made a lot of notes and took a lot of photos. After immersing myself in the subject, I then wrote out all the things that had caught my eye, often a small detail, and expanded on each. Even if you aren’t interested in pursuing a single subject at length, go to a museum if you’re ever stuck on what to write. Each one is stuffed with ideas, waiting for you to find them.

Reading: I wrote a sequence of poems on the Dido and Aeneas story as presented in Virgil’s Aeneid Book IV. I have also written a response to Keats’ Lamia and reworked a section of Shakespeare’s As You Like It for a recent commission from the Winchester Poetry Festival. Your reading can prove to be a rich source of inspiration, from re-writing in a different era or from a different perspective to responding to the text in some way. There are so many ideas and opportunities between the lines of everything you read.

News Stories: I make a point to read a newspaper on Sunday. I know I can get all the news I need from twitter and the BBC News website, but there is something about setting aside time to find out more about the world that helps you to see everything differently. Sunday papers are good for this because they have more in depth reports and interviews but local papers are also an amazing resource.

Conversations: I count both conversations I’m a part of and those I overhear. Sometimes I’ll be talking to someone who will say something so beautiful, or we will stumble on a subject so fascinating that I will write about it. My favourite, though, is the snatches of conversation you can overhear in public places. Those tantalising scraps can often lead you down really interesting roads.

Writing Prompts and Exercises: When I am entirely stuck, I use writing prompts. I’ve collected many over the years and I keep them on scraps of paper in a bowl on my desk. I pull one out and free write for at least ten minutes and then develop it from there. You can find books of prompts to work from, or find them on writing feeds on instagram and tumblr. In his books On Poetry and Drinks with Dead Poets, Glyn Maxwell presents a number of writing exercises that can get you started. I can’t recommend them, or his brilliant books, enough. I can’t say these approaches work every time – sometimes I think you’re just stuck and you need to go away, read some more, live some more and come back another day – but I’ve had some success with poems written this way. I love the fact that they’ve come from playing games with words, almost as if they grew themselves on the page.

So the short answer to where I get my ideas is from the world, in all its beautiful, frustrating, baffling, frightening, funny and melancholy glory. When the world fails me, there are always the words.

What kind of poet are you?

It’s my least favourite question because I don’t really have an answer. I have very supportive friends who sometimes introduce me to people as a poet and in most cases those people smile and nod; some back away and others ask what kind of poet I am. I never know what to say.

My favourite follow up to that initial question is, “Are you a modern poet?” I had to bite my tongue to not respond that I wasn’t at all modern and was, in fact, a time-travelling Victorian poet. I think that question was actually code for “Does your poetry rhyme?” and my answer to that is that sometimes it does - and sometimes even at the end of the line in a regular pattern - but sometimes it doesn’t.

Other people might ask cautiously if I write personal poetry; I think this might relate to the popular image of the doomed poet and they’re really asking if I’m obsessively grieving over a doomed love affair, about to die of consumption, or perhaps one step away from putting my head in the oven. I think that’s why people sometimes back away and to be honest, were any of those to be the case, I wouldn’t blame them. So again, the answer is sometimes I write personal poetry and sometimes I don’t.

Another response I get is that people tell me I don’t look like a poet. I don’t really know what to say to that because I don’t really know what a poet is meant to look like. To be honest, I’m pretty lazy about my appearance, I live in jeans and you’ll prise the Doc Martens off my cold, dead (comfortable) feet. If I have an hour to get ready for a night out, chances are pretty high I’ll read for most of that hour and then grab whatever is clean ten minutes before I have to leave. Sometimes I wish I could look more like a poet, more romantic and ethereal, maybe, but sometimes I think of whatever book I’m reading and I’ll want to spend time doing that a lot more than I want to do my hair.

So what kind of poet am I? One who loves history and legend but can be inspired by the modern world, one who writes about political and social issues and sometimes discovers personal stories woven into the work. In short, one who loves words and puts that love first – all the time. 

My name is Zoe and I am a writer

This may seem like an obvious title for my first blog post but creating this site was, for me, a very clear commitment to something I have been working towards for years. It can take a long time to call yourself a writer, I think. Everyone is still learning, everyone faces the terror of the blank page when you forget everything you ever knew about writing and everyone waits for the moment where they feel legitimate as an artist.

It’s taken me a long time to realise that the only person who can really give you that seal of approval is yourself. If you write, you are a writer and it’s really as simple as that. If you’re still on the fence, I can recommend reading Sara Benicasa’s book Real Artists Have Day Jobs  or The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer to help clarify your thoughts on what it means to be an artist and how you can build belief in yourself.

This blog, and in fact this whole site, is an attempt to document my life as a writer, to state loud and clear who I am and what I do. I have a lifelong love of words and that, rather than any personal or political agenda, drives my writing. Of course I have views on political issues and emotional responses to my life that appear in my work but for me, writing comes less from a burning desire to share those opinions and feelings and more because I love to play with words. I love the look of them on the page, the sound they make, the way they work together.

Stephen King said that books are a portable kind of magic; each word, then, is an ingredient for a spell. You’ll see under each highlighted publication I’ve explained a little of my inspiration and motivation for writing each piece. Over time, I’m hoping this site will become something like a book of spells, reminding me where poems come from and helping me when I lose my way. I hope that the site can help you, too, as a reader or a writer. It’s nice to meet you. My name is Zoe and I am a writer.