Joanna Hastings

LOVE The Detectorists!
New socks are a special joy.
And rain and walking and writing - what could be better?

Sending love always, dear Electra. ❤️ Thank you for reminding me that the world is full of things to do that aren't doom-scrolling.

(I too have been writing. ✍️)

No, thank YOU. For everything you do.

I can't say enough about these beautiful books. The powerful poetic voices, the elegant, incredibly high-quality volumes, the labour of love of the small-press publisher which shows in every aspect of each book. And at this price? Get them all. #Poetry

I'm (still, six years on!) writing a novel set in the Scottish Highlands. Western coast, though, a semi-fictionalised Moidart. I love Scotland too.

Heron with a fish (or a frog?) in its beak, standing on a mossy boulder with white water rushing behind it.

Here's another Rivelin heron!

Image of male prisoner sitting in his cell reading. Workshops in Prisons We deliver day-long workshops to prisoners, both male and female, all over the country, helping them to write a bedtime story for their children or grandchildren.

This week, picture-book writer Smriti Halls and I will be delivering workshops in HMP Elmley and HMP East Sutton Park for Stratford Literary Festival’s outreach programme.

Ten Longbarrow hardbacks, arranged diagonally, spines facing outwards.

Our books will last a lifetime, and you can pick up any 3 of them for £32 until midnight. Includes collections by Steve Ely, Angelina D'Roza, Rob Hindle, Peter Riley, Nancy Gaffield, Mark Goodwin, Matthew Clegg, Chris Jones, Fay Musselwhite and more
longbarrowpress.com/current-publ...

Poem 'A girl, like, y'know' by Tony Walsh

Yesterday I read at an International Women’s Day event supporting Causeway & Mid-Ulster Women’s Aid

Learning about their work was inspirational, but so sad to hear about the waiting list for their services

Driving home this poem by Tony Walsh came to mind

#poetry
#poemoftheday
#iwd2026
#iwd

Pablo Neruda on How to Hold Time “Time is a river that sweeps me along, but I am a river,” Borges wrote. “Time is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.” Most of us are not Borges. Most of us are drown…

Mary Oliver: What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
Me: Read Pablo Neruda, over and over again.

www.themarginalian.org/2026/03/03/n...

I love this so much. 🖤💙🌕

Someday I will finish my novel, and it will be published, and people will buy it, and I will make a little bit of money, and I will spend it all on Frank's art. 😂 #aspirations

In the meantime, someone should buy this and feel the joy from it every day.

This looks brilliant! Thank you.

Introduce yourself and your WIP with emojis.

Me: 💚🐈‍⬛☕✍️🎭🐾🌄📚🌖
WIP: ⛈️👧👥⛰️👵🚣‍♀️⚰️😭🎣🐚🦌🔥🐎🦭🌊

🚨 It looks like the UK government is gearing up to upend copyright law in favour of AI companies, legalising the theft of their work.

This is despite creatives' huge protests, and despite previous proposals being roundly rejected by the public.

Please spread the word.

🧵 1/4

#blurrybirding

🦉👓💙

I'm in! Yet another blurry-vision birder, and I don't know where I put my binoculars. But buzzards circle close so regularly, I don't think I'd easily mistake them now.

It took just one phone call from Donald Trump for Starmer to jump into yet another Middle East illegal war, failing to learn the lessons of the tragedies of Iraq, Libya and Syria.

Buzzard?

The windows of John Lewis, Barker’s Pool, Sheffield, 12 April 2021. The closure of the store was announced on 24 March 2021; it did not reopen. Photograph: Brian Lewis.

When I lost interest in narrative, I lost the stories of my own life, I couldn’t fill the holes in the plot. I started to tell the stories again, piecing them together from what others had told me, their remembering was my remembering. The telling is all.
longbarrowpress.substack.com/p/heart-of-t...

I was born in an Iranian prison. My parents were held in their jails. My uncles lie in their mass graves. Nothing you can tell me about the crimes of the Iranian regime that I haven't lived in blood and bone. That doesn't mean I want my people bombed, maimed, killed, their homes in ruins. If your vision of liberation comes only through the destruction of innocent lives, then it's not freedom you're after. Sahar Delijani, Iranian author

I am pro Iranian people. I stand with them against their own government’s repression AND against the imperial violence in the form of bombs dropped from the sky from Israel & the US who have already killed hundreds.

I support neither imperialism or dictatorship.

Sahar Delijani said it best:

❤️

Did I tell you, I'm writing the worst novel ever? Today, anyway. Several friends are also regularly writing the worst novel in the world.

Relax. Don't push. Tomorrow your poems will beat your door down, possibilities bursting out of them. So good you'll barely believe you wrote them.

If I didn't already own this, I'd buy it. I may buy it anyway. At that price, you could have one in every room - Pete Green's wintry, magical words under your hand at any given moment, waiting for a voice.

The age of bullshit is ending... Love that.

Answering bad faith questions honestly and intelligently is Zack's superpower. The sneering audacity of these two, and then Zack's absolute trouncing of them, is amazing to watch. Loved seeing them fumbling for words after the "media should take responsibility" line. Yes, Sky News. You.

Salt, meet wound. 😂

It doesn't seem like too much to ask. They've got a dodo, for crying out loud.

If you haven't listened yet, listen

If you haven't canvased for the Green Party yet, get involved

If you live in Gorton and Denton, vote Green 💚 tomorrow!

Amazing! Never been on a starter kit before. 😅❤️

It's pure malice. On the other hand, I'm not on it! And I'm kind of pissed. If you lot are all there, it feels like a badge of honour. (Don't really want to be blocked by people thinking I'm a fascist, but honestly, they've chosen all my top people.)