THE GIFT OF ENCOURAGEMENT

Writing can be a lonely occupation. Especially in those times when we wonder why we keep going, when another email rejection arrives, or a competition deadline passes so your failure registers by default, when it seems like no one likes your work enough to put it out there.

But then there comes a moment when you feel seen, validated. An acceptance. And even more, a comment on the quality of your work. Someone gets you, appreciates what you have done, and wants to include it alongside work you admire.

This is what it felt like when I recently submitted two works successfully to the Harpy Hybrid Review. Not only did the editors come back to me quickly (which is amazing in itself) but they said my two pieces about my dad’s dementia were “beautiful and heartbreaking”, which is just as I had intended them to be.

A few months later and I’m excited to see the Spring edition 2024 published. And there’s THIEF and JIGSAW, in among other pieces so good they make me wish I’d written them, and with other writers and artists – visual poets in particular – who speak the same language as me. I feel at home. And it makes me want to shout out to as many people as possible, “Come and see what we’ve done! It might not be what you’re expecting but it might speak to you too.”

It’s great to feel part of this creative community.

And creatives do seem so good at community. You’d think that we would be competing with each other – for publication, for agents, for grants, for sales, for views – but actually we’re only ever competing with ourselves. Our fellow artists are (in my experience) cheering each other on, vicariously enjoying each other’s successes, and seeing other’s achievements as encouragement that we might be able to do likewise.

They are some of the most generous and encouraging people I’ve come across.

I think of the poet, Liz Berry, not only giving permission for us to use her poem on our local radio series but also offering to record it for us. Or author, Deborah Jenkins’s consistent words of encouragement on social media. Or how artist, Paul Hobbs, took the time to send detailed and supportive replies when I emailed asking for advice. Or check out Amy McNee whose Instagram account art (@inspiredtowrite) constantly reminds artists how great they are and to keep going. Or Valley Verse, my local poetry group, where new and established writers are welcomed with equal enthusiasm. Or any one of my fellow students at Plymouth University, relishing each other’s work across the genres.

We all need people who will encourage and challenge us, help us feel seen and known. The Bible talks about encouragement as a gift from God. Creatives seem to have it spades.

ORDINARY EXTRAORDINARY

We took advantage of the good weather yesterday and went to Saltram again just outside Plymouth. The grounds are beautiful, the Chapel Tearoom food delicious, and their volunteer guides are some of the most enthusiastic and knowledgeable we’ve ever met.

They are full of stories.

How an enthusiastic conservator in the family wrongly labelled – in gold leaf – some key paintings. How one Countess went off around Europe to practise her painting skills because she didn’t want to meet the Pope with her husband. How another died on her honeymoon. Even how a modern teenage visitor ignored the guide ropes and did a Fosbury Flop onto a delicate four poster bed.

The world is full of stories if we take the time to listen or look for them.

We found a new one – well, new to us – in our own family history recently. My father in law has given us two big boxes of family photos to sort and scan so that they can be saved and shared. This one is of my husband’s grandparents, Nick and Edie, his brother, Fred, and his wife, Sylvie.

“Oh yes,” said my husband, “Fred’s the one who was a Japanese prisoner of war.”

It was too fascinating not to do some research to see if I could find more details. There’s so much you can learn from forms and we hit gold dust with Fred: a questionnaire given to British and American POWs on liberation, full of detail. It proved he had been a POW, although not under the Japanese, and no Hollywood worthy story but still a moving one of an ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances.

Aged 20, he left his job as a printer in 1940 to enlist in the Royal Army Service Corps, where he served as a driver. Eighteen months later he was captured at Tobruk (in modern day Libya) in Rommel’s retaking of the city and the largest capture of British Commonwealth troops since the fall of Singapore.

Fred spent the rest of World War Two as a prisoner, initially in Bhengazi in North Africa, then Altamura and Carpi in Italy, finally in Muhlberg and Oschatz in Germany. For the final two years, he was in work camps, doing back breaking jobs in granite quarries.  At one point he caught malaria but reports that he had adequate medical care thanks to a French medical officer and a British orderly.

En route to Egypt on the troopship Nea Hellas, Fred had watched a film about what to do in case of capture but that was his only training. He was taught nothing about escape or evasion but that didn’t stop him trying. He and another soldier, John Sumner of the Kings Own Rifles, escaped once from a prison column marching between Grimma and the River Elbe. They were both fit but had no maps and were picked up by German guards only eight hours later and returned to the column. 

He did what he could in terms of sabotage though. He broke tools on a daily basis and twice poured a drum of diesel oil into a stream by the quarry.

I can’t help but admire Fred for this. He’s no Steve McQueen hero, no document forger or tunnel digger. He’s an ordinary man doing what he can to disrupt the enemy despite the risk of punishment.

Day after day. For three years.

What a story of faithfulness, of not forgetting who you are and what your purpose is, no matter the limitations of the circumstances he finds himself in.

Only months after the war ended, Fred married Sylvie.

There’s another story of everyday heroism mentioned on the form too. Under ‘any other matter of any kind you wish to bring to notice’, Fred wrote:

“I should like to state that a Polish girl helped us at Kleinsteinberg on many occasions when we were very very hungry. She stole potatoes for us from the farm she worked on in Kleinsteinberg at great personal risk. Her name is Johanna Motika. I believe she is still in Kleinsteinberg.”

I wonder who Johanna was? And what prompted her to be so kind and generous and brave? In another document, the Registration of Foreigners and German Persecutees 1939-1947, there’s a Janina Johanna Matyka living in Hof, a hundred miles south of Kleinsteinberg.  She’s listed as being born in 1923 in Tarnow, South East Poland. I wonder if that’s her and what happened to her.

But that’s another story.

IN BETWEEN TIMES AND PLACES

We’ve just come home from two weeks back in Hampshire. Back in the old family home where our boys returned to live. People laugh when I tell them our sons moved back in and we moved out! We had a lovely family time. Easter is an important time for us to be together. We cooked and ate great food, shopped and walked, gardened and read together.

We also went back to do specific things: dental appointments; visit my father in law recently out of hospital; DIY and some clearing out. I found papers related to Boys’ Brigade and my previous job no longer needed. And we’ve contacted a charity about donating my mum’s old riser recliner chair that’s still in our conservatory.

Our boys only moved back temporarily in 2022. One stored all his stuff while he went travelling around America and then moved back himself to jobhunt and then found one within an easy commute. The other returned to think through what he wanted to do next, which proved to be an MSc in Applied Meteorology at a nearby university, and is now waiting to hear back on a job application.

We were happy to provide them with a home again before they find their own and they have lived well together. I think they’ve been good for each other. And it was helpful for us, not to leave the house empty or have the hassle of finding tenants, while we made the giant move to Cornwall. It gave us wiggle room to try out living down here, to see if it suited us.

Initially we said we’d give it my MA year to decide. But, as I’ve told my sons before, there’s a difference living somewhere as a student and living there as a resident. We realised after I finished that we needed more time to make a final decision about a permanent move. We also needed to see what it was like with the Lovley Mr M retired, a new routine for both of us to work out.

So have we made a final decision now? Not completely. It’s complicated. We think we know. But it’s more of a growing percentage of sureness than a specific moment of yes or no. There are pros and cons of both places and returning to Hampshire reminded us of many of the pros of there, of what and who we miss: friends, the garden, the sound of birdsong (instead of gulls), a dishwasher!

It’s unsettling, to be honest. We are still living in an in between time. Home is now and not yet for us. While we wait for our boys to be settled in their own homes and futures. While we take the time to find our part in a new community. I’m so glad a friend who made the same move advised me that putting down roots in Cornwall is a slow process.

Sometimes I remind myself that this liminal feeling is perhaps familiar for Christians. We love this world but it’s not necessarily our forever home. When I imagine what Heaven might be like, I think it will feel like coming home. I picture arms wide open in welcome, familiar beloved faces, and what my family called ‘four ones’*: a hug circle where we all fitted together like jigsaw pieces.

I guess Lent is a similar waiting time. I’ve followed the practices in the wonderful book A Different Kind of Fast by Christine Valters Paintner this year. Coming out of it, I feel better equipped to not rush but let decisions unfurl in God’s timing. I will try to consider this time of ‘at home and not yet’ like a Celtic ‘thin place’, where secular and sacred meet and merge, where we can take our time to let go of what we need to and grow into our permanent home.

(* or ‘three ones’, ‘six ones’, etc, however many people were there)

WATERCOLOUR LESSONS

While my left hand was out of action, I needed something to replace the crafts I loved but couldn’t do. An outlet for a different path of my brain, a respite of creativity that wasn’t the work that writing is for me. I decided to use the watercolours I had bought but not used since my dissertation.

A year or two I would have been so surprised to see myself both painting and enjoying it. I had always been terrible at art at school. But my recent year back at university had taught me some new things: being creative for the joy of it and experimenting for fun. So I had followed a basic drawing course, which taught me something else: there are rules and techniques that can be learned and applied for satisfying results.

Not that I’ve taken a course in watercolour. I’ve just found artists on Instagram sharing exercises and principles, simple images to copy and adapt, then see how mine turn out. People like @rebelunicroncrafts or @essoldodesign, who generously share some of their process and ideas online.

And one thing I’ve discovered is that, although there are definite ways that watercolour behaves that you can utilise, for example creating blooms by dropping water or another wet colour onto wet paint, or creating texture effects with salt, clingfilm, or sponge, there’s also a large element that you can’t control. And just as the paint dries a different tone to when it is wet, it means there is always a surprise, a discovery about the final result.

And that’s a good thing to learn, to practise: letting go, of expectations and of the need to get everything ‘right’. Allowing myself to do my bit and see what happens from that. It goes against the grain for a perfectionist, for someone like me who grew up trying to earn approval by being the best. But I find I rather enjoy not being in control. Trying something as an experiment takes the pressure off. Instead of berating myself with:

“That’s not how I wanted it to turn out,”

I can say:

“Oh, that’s what happens when you do such and such.”

It’s a discovery instead not a disappointment. Or a bit like being a Christian – doing my bit but not stepping on God’s toes, trusting Him to His bit, and waiting to see how it finally turns out.

I’m still figuring out what’s my painting style and not just copying others’, my equivalent of a writer’s voice. And I’d like to see if I can integrate it somehow into my visual poetry in some way, but not as simple illustration. I’m wondering about painting designs over printed pages or words on abstract watercolour maps, using watercolour or mixed media with previous techniques like calligraphy or Celtic symbols.

Maybe I won’t resolve these questions. Maybe there will always be something else to learn, to experiment with. Maybe I won’t stick to one technique or style and that eclectic mix will be my voice! I don’t know.

But I also don’t mind. Which is another change for me. I am so glad God led me away from my old career, not just to develop my writing skill, but also to become more adventurous, less careful (and care-full). To teach me how adversity can actually be a direction pointer – I would never have tried watercolour and found this new joy were it not for my hand injury – and to discover the wonder of trying new things. And I wonder if it was a bit like this when the ‘Word became flesh’ and Jesus got to experience for Himself all the new things about being human?

What Makes A Perfect Day

“That’s the third time you’ve checked the weather forecast today. It’s not going to change.”

It was true. Already annoyed that my graduation was scheduled for the ridiculous miserable month of February, my fears for terrible weather spoiling the day looked like they would be justified. The day before, we could barely see the houses on the hill opposite for the grey that descended, as if we were living in an actual rain cloud. And no let up was forecast for the day itself.

‘“It doesn’t matter,” said my husband. “It might be raining outside but we will be bringing so much sunshine inside.”

I smiled. He is a wise man.

“I know why you’re worried though,” he continued.  “You just want everything to be perfect.”

His turn to smile. He knows me so well.

I did want it to be perfect. It was a big deal for me. I’ve completed three lots of studies at university but this was my first graduation. On the other hand, I’ve attended all five graduations the Lovely Mr M and our sons have earned between them. It felt strange to be the focus of attention now.

Rain seemed such a silly thing to worry about. But worry I did. About my hair getting spoilt. About my dress and gown getting soaked. About the photos looking awful as a result. About dripping my way onto the platform and tripping over. I just wanted it to be perfect.

But Mr M’s comments made me think. What makes a special day perfect or not?

I’m writing this the day looking back. Was it perfect? I mean, in some ways, no. We didn’t get the group photo of everyone from our course that we hoped for in the chaos of the crowd. I wish there’d been refreshments provided. We were disappointed the programmes didn’t include everyone’s names so we didn’t get that paper memento our success. I completely missed when I was meant to doff my cap to the Vice Chancellor as I got my awards, ending up doing a weird semi wave instead. And yes, it did rain. Most of the time and I did get wet, like everyone else.

But in the end, none of it mattered. I had a whole day of celebration with my three favourite men. I am so grateful for my sons making a 400 mile round trip on a 24 hour turnaround just for me. I got to see most of my lovely friends from my course and celebrate together. I spent the whole day grinning. And the photos turned out great – helped by some strategic umbrella placement by my family.

There were some small but wonderfully special moments. When the gown hire lady slipped it over my shoulders, straightened my mortarboard and adjusted the tassel, I suddenly thought “Oh, this is it” and it felt like the morning when I put my wedding dress on. I knew this was my day and just to enjoy it.

Then there was the smile on my friend Gabrielle’s face when we first saw each other and leaned over the pew to hug. The sound of the Grand March from Aida as the platform party paraded in, another memory from my wedding day. Stopping to smile and pose for a photo as I passed my family on the way back to my seat. The excited grin and wave from our head of school as he passed our group on the solemn parade out. The looks on my family’s faces and the loud whoop as I walked onto the platform. The number of times Mr M whispered how proud he was of me and how happy that made him.

I got my perfect day. I just needed a better definition of perfect.

“And not a tear is wasted” *

“if you weren’t haunted by those stories, you wouldn’t waste your time trying to write it.” (The Art of Memoir by M Karr)

It’s a fine line to walk, writing about deeply personal experiences, especially painful ones, and then putting them out there for the world to see. Deciding how much to reveal and how much to keep private. Working out what’s beneficial and what’s self-indulgence. Perhaps being British, with a history of not expressing our feelings – except at football matches! – doesn’t help.

I’ve written a lot about personal and painful stuff. I try to be very careful when it involves others, my family usually, asking for permission first, abandoning anything they aren’t comfortable with. I haven’t always got it right. I always try to ask myself if something is my story to tell or someone else’s.

Sometimes that’s unclear – because trauma, illness, doesn’t just happen to one person. Take my mother’s death, my father’s dementia, or my son’s bipolar. However, what I can write about is my experience of those things.

And there are benefits. Much of what I wrote during my Creative Writing MA turned out to be  therapy for me, processing traumatic events and putting them into context with the benefit of distance, rehab if you like. But more than that, the whole theme of my dissertation -a visual poetry collection – became the means of redeeming those events. I called it Prayer Stations: Acts of Reclamation. Like I was creating my own reclamation yard of experiences, using words and arts to upcycle them into something new.

The other benefit of going public with my experiences is when it chimes with a reader. I can’t measure (at this point) my worth as a writer in income or competitions success or any other commercial way. However, there are times when I get a comment, when someone says: “Yes, that’s me too.” And they feel seen, acknowledged, less alone in the experience. There’s something about putting it into words that makes a difficulty manageable, contained somehow’ sharing it dilutes its power somehow. Those comments are precious and it’s those moments that make me feel validated as a writer.

My faith helps. Not that it always makes things easy! But it gives me a filter to look at these experiences through – or maybe more like putting on the right pair of prescription glasses. I remember the first pair I had to wear all the time: suddenly I could see details, like individual leaves on trees, again and everything seemed to jump six feet nearer.  

The Casting Crowns song I quoted goes on to say:

And not a tear is wasted
In time, you’ll understand
I’m painting beauty with the ashes
Your life is in My hands

It sounds pretentious perhaps but that’s what I feel I am doing. Or what God is doing through my creativity. Painting beauty with ashes. Just as I buy preloved clothes and combine them with old things from my wardrobe into new looks, or repurpose old book pages into an Advent Calendar box, or put my garden waste out for the council to turn into compost, – it’s all redemption and reclamation.

Much of our past traumas are behind me now. My parents, although I will always miss them, are home with God. My son no longer even needs medication for his bipolar. And I am so much happier as a writer than I was in my later years as an occupational therapist.

I am no longer haunted by those experiences. And I don’t need to look back on them with regret because nothing is wasted.

(*Just Be Held by Casting Crowns)

Single Handed

So, a week of living one handed. Resting my left hand so the steroid injection can do its work, staying in the right place in that complex arrangement of tiny bones, ligaments, and nerves in my wrist, to ease the inflammation and relieve the pain of tendonitis I’ve had increasingly over the past six months.

It slows everything down. Typing this with just my right hand, for example, my text lags behind my thoughts. Taking tablets out of their strip has to be broken down into stages. Working out how to get out of the bath without placing weight through my left hand or slipping. Pulling up trousers alternating one side then the other.

And it all takes more effort: I’m having to consciously think about how to do everything. As well as remember not to use my left hand. The extra concentration sucks away my energy. I’m so tired.

Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t meant as a pity post. It’s only for a week. Thanks to my OT background I know, or can work out, plenty of ways to adapt. And I have some very thoughtful help from the Lovely Mr M. (You know you have a good spouse when they so uncomplainingly spray deodorant under your armpits!)

No, it’s just the experience is giving me pause and cause to think. In the past, I would have used it as an opportunity to understand and empathise with my patients better. Now, I’m thinking about what significance or metaphor I can find in this. In one chapter of Thomas Moore’s Care of the Soul, which I’ve been reading recently, he talks about how it can be valuable to consider ‘the symbolic and poetic suggestiveness of a disease or malfunctioning’.

It’s made me wonder if living without the use of my non dominant hand is a bit like living without God. Bear with me on this. It’s not meant as criticism, more personal reflection, knowing I have had times in my life without faith.

Don’t get me wrong. I can do plenty with just my right hand. (And I’m very grateful it wasn’t this hand I’ve got the De Quervain’s in). But what I’ve realised about my non dominant hand is how big a stabilising role it has. How it simply holds things so my right hand can manipulate them. That’s why I can’t slice bread or open a package at the moment. Or do creative things like knitting or sewing (even machine sewing). Or carry out mundane parts of tasks like sticking masking tape down to make a border for a watercolour.

It’s not the weight. It’s the placing. It’s the holding steady.

And in one respect, that’s what God does for me. Holds things in place. While I either dance or teeter around Him. He is the true north to my wobbling compass needle. My life is not made easy by His presence but it is harder without Him. I can decide my own route through life but when His hand is in the guidance, and I listen, the route makes sense and leads to life in all its fullness.

And just like I don’t notice the work my left hand is doing most of the time, so God’s presence can go unremarked. It is in times of pain or difficulty, for me, that I get the chance to stop and observe and consider.

64 Million Artists

If you follow me on social media (and if you don’t, please do – links are at the end of this post), you’ll know I’m doing The January Challenge from 64 Million Artists. (https://64millionartists.com/) It’s an organisation which encourages everyone’s creativity to promote positive change.

I’ve been thinking about my aims for the coming year as a writer/artist. I want to get my work seen more and build links with other creatives. With so much still to learn I need to keep experimenting and practising. And deadlines to keep me disciplined. The January Challenge helps meet those aims. But what does that mean on a daily basis? Let me take you through my process for yesterday’s prompt.

A daily email brings a prompt, with a link to further explanation on the website. Yesterday’s came from Scott Thomas, an artist and theatre maker from Glasgow. He asked us to gather materials from our recycling box or messy drawer and then wait a minute, stepping back to clear our thoughts or focus on our breathing – definitely not using the time to plan our piece – before we start.

I thought about my art box of unused bits and bobs or my remnants basket of unused fabrics and offcuts. But then I noticed the pile still sitting on my table left over from the Advent Box I made in November. I hadn’t thrown them away because I felt they might have some potential for something else. And I hate waste. Ideas of a collage with an abstract watercolour started forming in my mind.

But first the minute of pause. I’m used to relaxation techniques so I found this quite easy. The trick is just to notice intrusive thoughts without judgement and let them come and go like waves or breaths. The time went surprisingly fast. So I gave myself another minute.

When I looked at the materials again, a new idea came. On cards where I’d tried out different forms of writing of the Bible verse I’d used for the Advent box (John ch.1 v.14) individual words began to stand out: flesh, blood, moved. It’s a familiar verse for me but I noticed different emphases, a bit like when I practise lectio divina. What if I broke this sentence down so those words and phrases repeated on my piece?

I laid them out and then looked at the torn page remnants. These were from an Oxfam craft bundle (do have a look at the Oxfam shop online https://onlineshop.oxfam.org.uk/product-catalog-collection-arts-crafts/category/arts-crafts?N=2266122615&Ns=product.creationDate|1&Ntk=&Nr=AND(product.active:1,NOT(sku.listPrice:0.000000))&No=0&Nf=&Nrpp=30) from an old geographical dictionary. I’d picked them for the Advent Box because of the phrase ‘moved into the neighbourhood’, which I’d painted as Looe.

But then I noticed the page leftovers included various maps. I do love a map. My piece didn’t need more words to distract from the ones already there. Rural and urban. Individual college buildings and country borders. Historical places which continue to and no longer exist. Christ, the Word, in any and all neighbourhoods throughout time.

Watercolour didn’t seem needed now. But I wanted a little colour to lift the piece. In among the detritus, I found some faded fallen petals from a bouquet Rob had bought me. They seemed to fit the sepia tones and were shaped a little like drops of blood.

At this point, I hand the interpretation over to you. I want my works to be interactive, collaborative. They are as much about what you read into them with your history and perspective as it is about what led me to create them as I did. That for me is one of the wonderful things about art and poetry.

I’ll be continuing with the January Challenge for the rest of the month. Do come and join me on and comment. Or even have a go yourself.

Facebook: Liz Manning

Instagram: @princessofthelaundrybasket

Twitter/X: Liz @lifemadestuff

NATIVITY!

It’s a strange experience to have two houses to decorate at Christmas.  

In Fleet, the boxes have come down from the loft full of memories – the nutcracker from a business trip to Germany; the crocheted Santa hangings from a work fundraising fayre; bells fashioned from egg cartons, foil, and string and doily covered toilet roll angels all made by the boys when they were little; Advent calendar refilled and Jesse Tree rehung season after season; decorations from our sons’ old flats added to the mix.  In Looe, we’ve kept it simpler, concentrated on lots of lights.

But in each place, the essential decoration is the nativity set. It’s usually the last thing to go up, the finale so to speak. In previous Advents we’ve had the characters travel around the room or across the mantlepiece to echo their journeys to Bethlehem. Mary and Joseph in a mini version of the posada tradition we used to keep at the hospice. Baby kept out of site until after Midnight Mass. Kings not arriving until Epiphany.

Our Hampshire set is thirty five years old, carved from olive wood, bartered for from a street trader in Kigali. Traditional tall slim Rwandan figures – shepherds with pointed hooded cloaks, a cow with long curved horns.

Last year, I found our Cornish one, very different, in a local small charity shop. The volunteer behind the counter was so happy it was going to continue to be used as it had been her family’s one. I wondered to myself how she could bear to give it up. Today it is sitting in front of our log burner, where my eyes are regularly drawn to it:

I’ve placed it slightly differently to last year. The wise men are on the right, (sort of) from the East, with our Christmas-sailed boats aptly suggesting travel behind them. One tilts his head, apparently distracted by the cow. Perhaps he’s nervous of it or wondering what it’s doing in the nursery of a new king. The two animals face outwards as if guarding the baby. Joseph stands over mother and child protectively with that new parent’s question on his face:

“How will life turn out for you?”

An angel, standing slightly back, prays for the new little family, for the baby, for all he will meet and love. Her head is tilted as if contemplating, questioning even, God’s strange plan for His Son, as she worships.

I can’t make out the shepherd’s thoughts. He too stands guard but seems a little on the outside of it all. Perhaps he’s considering if it’s time to return to the other sheep out on the hills.

Mary’s posture seems the most unnatural: a pious kneeling woman rather than an exhausted new mother. Why isn’t she resting in bed or sat in a chair? But when I pick her up, I see her eyes are closed and with her half extended hand, I think she’s praying, catching a quiet moment with God in the midst of the crowd.

And the baby? This one’s rosy cheeked and wide shouldered, no newborn. He’s almost outgrown his manger-cot so more the likely age when the Magi visited than the shepherds. Which means this family will soon have to pack up and flee for their lives. This moment of peace and community will soon be gone.

May you find moments of peace and community this Christmas and into the New Year. And thank you for your company this year in the blog. God bless.

BOOK REVIEW: Poetry Matters by Olusola Sophia Anyanwu

Olusola Sophia Anyanwu is a prolific writer, which she achieves by being supremely organised and keeping to a clear aim to publish a book every year. The pieces in her most recent book were written during 2020-2022 and she has collated these into a three volume book, Poetry Matters: One Hundred Plus Poems From Africa, Europe and the UK. The poems are strongly rooted in that period, including subjects such as the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

Sophia’s poetry is at its strongest when she writes about the death of her sister and her homeland of Nigeria. Having worked for so long in palliative care, I was particularly struck by her description of the former experience, which she does from both the patient’s and the family’s point of view.

She comes up with some gems of phrases. ‘Sure of more tomorrows’ rolls comfortably around the mouth with its internal rhyme emphasising that confidence in the future, before it is taken away. The description of the cancer that does so captures the powerlessness of a terminal disease:

‘Waiting like a landlord

To evict you

From your earthly body.’

And the devastation it wrecks in ‘The Visit’ is heartbreaking:

‘It didn’t seem to be you

Dressed in skin layers

Of a century’.

‘On That Day’ describes her sister’s wrestling in faith with the knowledge of impending death, beautifully detailing the pendulum that swings from not wanting to leave to submitting to God’s will, acknowledging the lack of choice to depart life but holding onto the choice of how to do so. It is a fantastic statement of faith and hope.

All Sophia’s writing is faith based and that is evident throughout the collection, whether as direct prayers or informing her reflections on the personal and the social. That strong faith comes over joyfully in poems like ‘The King’s Daughter’, which describes a morning walk to school, noticing nature’s glory around her, with its final lines:

‘The sun’s morning rays kiss me

Good morning, Daughter of the King!’

Yet this faith is also honest and intimate, as a line in a later poem addressed to God says:

‘Potter, can You help me?

It is Your clay talking!’

I’m glad to hear that Sophia plans on writing more poetry about Nigeria. She clearly loves her birthplace and its culture as well as her adopted home (she writes with such affection about her town of Thamesmead). But her poems about her African homeland paint more than a geographical or sociopolitical picture, they speak to us directly of the experience of immigration:

‘It was the only home I had in the whole world –  where I did not think

I was different from anyone else’

(A Tribute to My Motherland)

Sophia is not blind to Nigeria’s problems, the political unrest of its past as well as its current difficulties. Her poem ‘Victims of Persecution’ focuses on the victims of the Chibok kidnapping in 2014 of 276 girls by Boko Haram. By June 2023, 90 were still missing, but even those that returned faced further suffering and rejection from their former communities. Sophia challenges us all to pray for and support the suffering Christians in Nigeria. I learned much about the country through her writing.

This collection of poetry is as wide ranging as all that matters to Sophia. It covers personal and universal experiences. I look forward to reading more by her.

(Note: I was given a free copy of this book in return for writing an honest review).