Sarah Doyle

💯% agree! 💚🌾💛

Mædwe by Corinna Board. Cover shows botanical illustration of grass stems with seed-heads.

Image of poem – 'Meadow semantics'.

Simultaneously vibrant and delicate, rooted in tender noticing and natural world empathy, brimming with gorgeous language... I have adored Corinna Board's new pamphlet 'Mædwe'. A must-read, warmly recommended. 💚🌾💛 Follow Corinna for details of her Zoom launch on Tuesday: @corinnaboard.bsky.social

Join us for Darling Blue’s Spring Launch at Script Haven @scripthavenltd.bsky.social in Worcester tomorrow, Sat, 28 Feb!!! Daytime Poet/Publisher in Residence with evening reading & open mic
Details: https://www.sarah-james.co.uk/?page_id=184 & https://fb.me/e/6EXr4EYPe

BBC headline: "Two London stations shut for 22 days this summer"

both alike in dignity

Would love to see you at the launch next week! (link in bio) 🌱💚

A bright pink square with the words ‘Today is our 117th Birthday!’ in the middle, in front of a glowing circle. Beneath this are the words ‘Championing poetry since 1909’. At the bottom of the square is The Poetry Society’s logo in white. Along the top of the square are rows of multicoloured bunting.

We’re 117 years old today!
The Poetry Society has been championing poets and poetry since 1909. If you want to help us continue our mission to promote the reading and writing of poetry, consider joining us as a member, or donating to us. We’d be delighted to have you. poetrysociety.org.uk

Happy Birthday! 🎂 Thank you for all of your brilliant work. 🎁

Launched confirmed for new Craft of Care anthology Black Pear Press are delighted to announce the launch of a new anthology, Craft of Care, collated and edited by Charley Barnes and Claire Walker. The launch for the anthology will take place online…

Being a carer can be variously exhausting, rewarding, even heartbreaking at times... but it is nearly always private, going largely unnoticed and unsung. Launching Weds 25th Feb on Zoom, this new anthology shines a light, and includes a poem of mine. Info here:
blackpear.net/2026/01/12/l...

I'm so glad if some of this helps, Nina. Starting small is a great idea. I have an exercise of writing 3 haiku on a given theme, returning to one as the fertile ground from which to grow a longer poem. Word cloud, flow chart, free writing... a way to recapture that lovely poetry endorphin buzz. xx

It wasn't easy, but I emerged eventually. I hope you find at least some of this helpful or reassuring. Wishing you good health and gentle self-care. x

Writing in small bursts helped. Writing with no burden of excellence helped. Zoom meet-ups with other poets helped. Playful writing exercise helped. And time helped. The oestrogen won't return, but the fog does lift. Taking pressure off myself was genuinely restorative and productive...

And I wrote things other than poems – devising workshops, writing feedback for other poets – which was a different kind of creativity, but still rewarding. I even followed my writing exercises to write poems of my own! ...

so I chose to ride it out, and allowed myself some valuable fallow time. I had to take 2.5 years away from my university research. I found alternative and gentle creative endeavours, such as crafting or sewing. I read for pleasure...

Hi Nina. I had the perfect storm of this plus severe post-Covid fatigue/brain fog, when I couldn't focus or organise my thoughts or remain attentive – so I sympathise. Fighting it took up even more energy and heightened my anxiety further (cont) ...

Happy book birthday, Jonathan! x

Oh that's right – no consecutive inclusions. I hope you're able to find somewhere else.

Perhaps 'Long Poem Magazine', which reopens to submissions in June?

Enormous congratulations on this well-deserved recognition of your beautiful and innovative artwork, Julia. x

✅👌

The Croc Inside?

There is some extraordinary work here, so I'm very glad to have an art/text hybrid (small watercolour + tiny poem) in 'Time as Falling Atoms', an object of wild and complex beauty from Acropolis Journal. Many thanks to Louise Mather for the invitation, and for her sensitive and imaginative curation.

How wonderful to see this by Junior Journalists celebrating the opening of the brand-new Benjamin Zephaniah Library at William Murdoch Primary School! After speeches students performed Zephaniah's poems aloud - good practice for taking part in the #PoetryByHeart competition! 📚✨

Congratulations, Peter. Great use of sensory detail, particularly colour and smell, to evoke an atmosphere of tension and claustrophobia.

A last call for this! Do sign up.

Thinking and writing about the function of beauty in poetry, I enjoyed this meditation from poet Dana Gioia. I particularly like his argument that the word 'beauty' needs rehabilitation; that it is something deeper and wilder, to be dissociated from mere ornamentation.
share.google/Fe0JK7kRcpyh...

Fantastic, Beth. Congratulations, on both this poem and your forthcoming pamphlet. x

You are always so kind, Julian – thank you very much. I hope all is well with you, and if it's not too late… Happy New Year! 😊

I'm very glad to have a small watercolour image and a tiny poem in this beautiful and ambitious project, due for online publication in mid-February. Many thanks to Louise for the invitation.

Here we were on the Thames that is the Thames, amidst the down-like country and all Cockneydom left far behind, and it was jolly! – William Morris On the Thames that is the Thames by Sarah Doyle Kelmscott to Kelmscott, House to Manor, borne by the water’s shushing windrush, The Ark splits the Thames along its length. Imagine a family, two by two: parents and daughters, all stitched with the same silver-blue threads. Imagine how the weight of their bodies, their cargo of dreams, is spread, evenlode, through the wooden chambers of the boat’s heart. Hear the rise and fall of gentle rocking-song beneath them: cray-dle… cray-dle… What pattern-work must have been printed, briefly, onto the meniscus as they passed; a stylised ripple of petals, a wandle of bramble and vine making a lea below their bow. Imagine the travellers, suspended medway between banks, their craft a brown leaf on green stem, craning west-wey. The river asks nothing of them, seeks news from nowhere as its accent rolls from glottal-stopped cockney to lodden-soft burr. You will soon be home, Thames sings to itself as much as to those it carries. You will soon be home, from home. (c) Sarah Doyle

Embroiderer extraordinaire Jane Morris died on this day in 1914. Here's my @preraphaelitesoc.bsky.social poem celebrating the entire Morris family: William, Jane, and daughters, May and Jenny. I’ve hidden the names of several Thames-inspired Wm Morris designs within the poem. How many you can spot?!

A well-deserved platform for one of our finest poetry journals. I have a digital subscription, worth every penny – and now you can get 10% off!