Poetry
I have written poetry for over 25 years and became particularly interested in Performance Poetry when I did my dissertation on the topic in 2007 for my Joint Honours BA in Creative Writing and Writing For Stage, Screen and Radio. I have performed at a variety of events and venues since then, including theatres, art galleries, pubs, markets, festivals, variety cabarets, universities, parades and on BBC Radio Manchester.
My first poetry collection, '1000 Years' was published by Written Off Publishing in 2025.
Cut It Out & Smash It Up
This performance fuses cut-up poetry, live art, audience participation, exorcising the ghosts of a painful past, extreme catharsis and smashing plates with a hammer. Its first version was created for the Arts and Homelessness International showcase at the end of my Associate Leadership Programme, with the audience making cut-up poems from mystery envelopes of lines of my various poems about homelessness whilst I read lines aloud from plates and smashed them with a hammer. It's second version, performed at Short Supply Manchester's Scratch! involved a live wall painting with the audience after the plate smashing. I feel like this idea has so much potential and cannot wait to see where it goes next.
Not Like It's Gonna Kill You
Broadly Speaking, 2023.
It's A Poem, Duh!
International Women's Day, Girl Gang Manchester & The Met Theatre, 2023.
He's The One
Birds and Words, Leigh Spinners Mill, 2023.
The Loos Of The Noughties
Selina Helliwell Productions & Manchester Art Gallery, 2023.
CW: Adult themes & language.
Floorboards
'When She's At Home', Arts & Homelessness & Old Diorama Arts Centre, 2024.
CW: Adult language.
Mancunians Are Waterproof
Open Mind's 12th Birthday, Peer Hat, 2024.
CW: Adult language.
Can't Win (Clean Version)
WOW Fest, AVIVA Studios & Factory International, 2023.
1000 Years
GRT History Month, CultureDale, Leeds GATE & Halifax Market, 2024.
More Pride, Less Fall
Bi Pride Main Stage, University of West London, 2024.
My Gypsy Blood
GRT History Month Celebration, Halifax Town Hall, 2025.
Roma (A Children's Poem)
Kushti Cumpenia celebrating GRT History Month, Factory International at Aviva Studios, 2025.
Murmuration
Derby Poetry Festival, 2025.
CW: Adult Language.
There's Times
Hey! Festival, part of Art Bomb UK, 2025.
Everyone Is Different
(A Participatory Children's Poem)
Lancaster Lit Fest, 2026.
10 Years
Girl Gang's 10th Birthday Party, 2026.
Between The Stops
Between December 2025 and February 2026, two of my poems, 'Our Kid's On The Kindle' and 'My Grandma Painted Her Eyebrows On' were featured on buses around Portsmouth. (Pages 109-110).
The Pavement Magazine
I was Issue 160's, (Feb-March 2026), 'Artist In Focus', featuring the poem 'Floorboards'. (Pages 24-25).
