Maggie Sawkins and Margaret Kiernan share poignant memories from their childhood.

The village was gloomy when I got there. Its hand to its cheeks. Last time I was here my grandfather Bobai Lambaya was being buried. Now my brother.

Poetry may or may not be a branch of music but you have to admit it’s got a drum kit

Melissa St Pierre concludes her heart-warming trilogy of weddings, dresses and sisterhood.

The pair of golden eyes that greeted them upon peering inside belonged to an intrepid buff-colored grey-footed kitten.

In this moving tribute, Kim Ports Parsons recalls precious times spent with her mother and the joy of the words they shared

I would roll down the windows and listen to crickets, locusts, and frogs. I would watch the sun go down and forget who I was.

If you were young, Irish and broke, you told friends going home for Christmas, ‘I’m working for Big John. Tell them all I’m doing fine.’

This is an ‘excursion’ from a world of isolation, where the wanderer craves connection.

...there are worse literary sins than using seven words when four will do.

...we don’t learn the vehemence of words from our dictionaries, but from the contexts in which we encounter them.

After six decades of a love affair with words in both my languages, it’s time to confess that I have never actually had a mother tongue.

It's lazy writing, I tell him. As an editor I excise clichés with a fierce pen. (Although we editors no longer edit with pens.)

Now she’s falling, falling through to some black hole beyond. I imagine she feels like she’s drowning. Sometimes I feel I am too.

Now that I am retired, I feel I am in the best creative period of my life...Age can be hard on the body but freeing for the mind.

Urbane, metropolitan, cosmopolitan, at their best beguiling, unpredictable, open to difference, welcoming others, not pinned down to what they are but awaiting what they might become.

Everyone with the River Mersey flowing through their veins remembers where they were on the morning of Monday, December 8th, 1980

If you're satisfied with your life, if you believe your life has purpose and meaning, all of this Absurdism stuff will sound silly. But there is another way of interacting with the Absurd.

The lanes that lead there are rooted with oak and beech, its woodland ancient. In the spring it smells of childhood; purpled with bluebells and drifted with the pinks and whites of cow parsley and shepherd’s purse.

'It wasn’t the turf that would be torn up, but the predictions of every expert the length and breadth of the country'

But, here's a confession. I wasn't one bit outraged. In fact I would go as far as to say John Banville is as 'Woke' as the 'Wokest' man or woman among us.

This is the needed time. Repeat the sounding joy.

To kids for whom going to Connecticut held the excitement of a trans-Atlantic voyage, and journeying to Pennsylvania was as exotic as visiting the Orient, this was quite an adventure.

We wordmongers can be an odd assortment of nutjobs. Who of us in our right minds, if we ever found ourselves to be in right minds, would choose this writing life?

How vulnerable it is to be human. I worry for all young creatures and the earth they are being born into.

Like Truman Capote, I am always drawn back to places I have lived; although in my case it is more in the sense of memory, of imaginary travel to places real (or at least, once real)...

And they never knew what went on in the hallowed halls of one of Liverpool oldest Catholic schools. They also never knew of our struggle to get out.

We hear explosions and weapons firing nearby which shatter some of the glass in our apartment. Frighteningly, this becomes normal.

He was terrifying and glorious, loving and moody, a personality I took turns at loving and loathing

Winner of the Chaffinch Press Aware Award for Poetry 2021, Sarah Leavesley explores 'the power of the personal to reveal universal truths.'

Phillip Hall explains how pain can be subdued with love and nurture - and through it all there is poetry.

With only one life to my name, it seems a shame to limit my experiences and outlook. If you take charge of your own story, you get to choose the ending.

Simple pleasures are the last refuge of the complex

Poet and writer, Mike Smith explores the principal themes in the work of three short story writers, each with 'elements of the universal'

You can argue that there's nothing more valuable than human life, if you like. But recognise you are making a judgement, not stating a fact.

Award-winning poet Jane Clarke explains why 'place' is always at the heart of her poetry

It only takes a second to get a bright idea. One of these came to me in January 2020, in the midst of the devastating bushfires that were raging around Australia.

Something about the fall in the Midwest makes people want to get married.

Relief and sunshine came pouring through on the morning of November 7, 2020

A sombre Vivian Creegor dressed in a dark suit and white blouse sat behind the desk in the Sky News Studio in London and...

Before the virus came amongst us, writing was a vocation, maybe to be railed against on occasion. Now it’s therapy.

With the end of furlough I stand on a cliff’s edge, along with a whole sector of the British economy. Will anybody help us?

Robert Taylor discusses the twin forces of good copy and careful editing and recalls his 'finest moment as a copywriter'

Try it. Connect. Read your work. Listen to other poets read theirs. We too are essential workers, healing ourselves and each other by degrees, one heartfelt line at a time.

Lucia Sellars explores the key factors that contribute to essay writing and explains why we should consider breaking the rules

Sophia Kouidou-Giles recalls a visit to see her aunt at La Bête asylum, a powerful memory that has shaped her life in many ways

If the question 'Where are you from?' has ever filled you with dread, Christina Hoag's article offers hope and an answer!

To get us in the mood for trick or treating, award-winning journalist and teacher, Stacey Curran explains how Hallowe'en leftovers can go a very long way indeed.

Ever fancied being on the radio? Dominic Fisher tells us how!

Democracy requires constant scrutiny. It's time to vote!