Suzanna Fitzpatrick

Fellow @poetryschool.bsky.social MA student Charlotte Dormandy for @inksweatandtears.co.uk on the @poetrysociety.org.uk #nationalpoetryday theme of 'Play', selected by @cloudscholar.bsky.social. The best short poems Every nook in this opens into big questions. inksweatandtears.co.uk/play-for-nat...

Thanks @cloudscholar.bsky.social for selecting this for @inksweatandtears.co.uk on the @poetrysociety.org.uk #nationalpoetryday theme of 'Play'. Also up today is my @poetryschool.bsky.social MA colleague Charlotte Dormandy, will share her poem shortly.
inksweatandtears.co.uk/play-for-nat...

Grand to see a pome from The Mayday Diaries on @inksweatandtears.co.uk for its National Poetry Day series this year inksweatandtears.co.uk/play-for-nat...

Day four of our National Poetry Day celebration!

Again, today's poets - Wendy Klein, Robin Houghton, Judith Shaw, Jennifer A McGowan - all have wonderful takes on the theme of Play.

inksweatandtears.co.uk/play-for-nat...

#InkSweatandTears #Submissions #NationalPoetryDay

Day six of Ink Sweat & Tears' celebration of National Poetry Day: Play!

Today's poets - Rachel Burns, Catherine Sweeney, MD Bier - all take a look at childhood and play through a nostalgic lens.

inksweatandtears.co.uk/md-bier/

#InkSweatandTears #Poetry #Submissions #NationalPoetryDay

Day seven of our celebration of National Poetry Day and its theme of Play, and the focus shifts again.

Lee Fraser, Charlotte Dormandy and Suzanna Fitzpatrick look to children and their awe, wonder and imagination.

inksweatandtears.co.uk/play-for-nat...

#InkSweatandTears #NationalPoetryDay

Thanks to @bournemouthjournal.bsky.social for publishing my poem "Flood" in issue 2. Sadly it's a true story #climatechange .

Researching a poem, I'm amazed loo roll dolls are still around. Most houses in the 1980s had one. I prefer artist Shauna Richardson's Drag Race take: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-60166442 The doll in my poem escapes to enjoy a 3-way with Sindy & Barbie. Take that, Section 28 ;)

Don’t crush our right to protest! The right to protest is the heartbeat of democracy. It lets us speak out, challenge injustice, and hold those in power accountable. The Government’s plan would give police sweeping powers to ban repea...

😡 The Government wants to ban repeated protests & jail those who defy them. Stand up for our democratic right to protest - sign the petition now! you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/do...

I'll be reading at this next Mon 13 Oct with the @poetryschool.bsky.social MA fam past and present, including Sarah Gibbons
and Glyn Maxwell. Free, no need to book - books for sale, though! Or here: www.redsquirrelpress.com/product-page...

Really chuffed to be Poem of the Month in the Poetry Society's e-newsletter. Thanks again to Helen Farish for choosing it as one of the Members' Poems on the theme of 'Clearing'. Check out the other brilliant poems here: poetrysociety.org.uk/membership/m...

Sign the petition: Michelle Mone should be removed from the House of Lords This is big: Michelle Mone is being forced to pay back £122m after supplying poor quality protective gear to our NHS during the pandemic. But she STILL hasn't been kicked out of the House of Lords. Mo...

This is big: Michelle Mone is being forced to pay back £122m after supplying poor quality protective gear to our NHS during the pandemic. But she STILL hasn't been kicked out of the House of Lords. Mone has to go. Agree? Sign the petition today: 38d.gs/lrpq

@creationtheatre.bsky.social in Oxford are looking for a new General Manager. Applications close Mon 6 Oct, please email recruitment@creationtheatre.co.uk

Just invented a new month in a poem: Don't Give A Fucktober. Yes, give a fuck about the many things in the world which urgently require fucks given. But don't give a fuck about all the things with which the patriarchy tries to distract us, however you identify. Here's my #dontgiveafucktober face.

Off to read for The Poetry Society at the Poetry Cafe for #nationalpoetryday with headliner Bradley Taylor and others on the theme of 'play'. Serving a thrifted red playsuit in honour of the occasion. Poet necklace from Wear and Resist who donate to women's charities #persisterhood wearandresist.com

Thrilled to be Commended in #nationalpoetryday Stanza comp. I wrote it for @tessafoley.bsky.social in a @poetryschool.bsky.social MA workshop with Joelle Taylor. Congrats Marilyn Longstaff, runners-up Nairn Kennedy & Jack Houston & other Commended poets. I'll be reading at the Poetry Cafe tonight!

Congratulations are also in order for our runners-up, Nairn Kennedy and Jack Houston, as well as our commended poets, Corinna Board, Lucy Heuschen, Katharina Goda, Sam Phipps, Leah Larwood, Will Kemp, Suzanna Fitzpatrick, C.I. Marshall, Di Slaney, and Jacquie Shanahan!

Object Permanence He plays with our beige curtains as the sun makes spun straw of them, wraps himself: face snub against fabric, pot tum. I say oh no where has he gone? The brilliant shock – two teeth, a shriek - then I’m shut back in my own stale dark. Where’s he disappeared to? He peeks out, giggling. I’ve lost him, I’ve lost him. He is laughing laughing. Where is my boy? Here. Where is my baby? Here. Oh no I have to find him. He is here

Apparently the theme of #nationalpoetryday is ’play’ so here’s an old one from my collection Incarnation.

Happy #nationalpoetryday ! Fancy buying my book? Or indeed any of the many excellent poetry books being published what seems daily at the moment. Poetry is witness, and we need that more than ever.
www.redsquirrelpress.com/product-page... or DM me for a signed copy.

Rachel wearing very flimsy looking apron, mask and visor in NHS setting

Here I am in 2020 in the flimsiest, most pitful PPE - like so many other NHS staff, some of whom died from the Covid they caught in their hospitals.

Tory peer Michelle Mone - who today lost her legal case & must repay the govt £122m - dares to claim she’s been ‘scapegoated’.

What, Michelle? 🧵

Next on the reading pile, Winding / Unwinding by Denni Turp, (Culture Matters) which uses the tired innuendo of "the actress and the bishop" to explore class and gender inequality. This poem alone is both an evocation and a take-down of ingrained privilege. www.culturematters.org.uk/cm-publicati...

Catching up with the post-MA to-read pile(s). In X Coranto from @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social Kit Ingram weaves the history of the speaker's road with their own situation in 2020. Absolutely gripping, left me feeling as if I'd speed-read an entire novel. www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page...

New poem in the Autumn
Poetry News, thanks Helen Farish for selecting it: poetrysociety.org.uk/poems/puntin.... It was inspired by a photo from Erica Longfellow's Oxford Inverted exhibition. Reader, I dumped him. Never mess with a poet, they will throw shade at you in a poem 30 years later #FAFO 😜

Researching the amygdala for a poem, in a pub, whilst pickling my own...

Oxford launch of 'Crippled' Fri 14 Nov 5.45pm. Huge thanks to @kebleoxford.bsky.social for use of the HB Allen Lecture Theatre. Guest readers @tessafoley.bsky.social & Sarah Gibbons from @poetryschool.bsky.social MA. Copies www.redsquirrelpress.com/product-page/crippled-suzanna-fitzpatrick or DM me.

Honoured to have a poem in Write Out Loud's 20th anniversary anthology, chosen by Neil Astley. One from my shepherding days. I miss the noisy lambs. The anthology is jam-packed with quality poems; you can order it here: www.writeoutloud.net/books/

It's publication day for our three brilliant September titles: @poetclare.bsky.social's Lives of the Female Poets, @jesstraynor.bsky.social's New Arcana, and @emiliejelinek.bsky.social's The Sky Around My Father, winner of the @mslexia.bsky.social Women's Poetry Pamphlet Competition 2024.

Amazing @arvonfoundation.bsky.social workshop tonight with @novelniche.bsky.social, hosted by Eliza Squire-Bird, on defying binaries & celebrating bi+ poetry. Wrote 4 new poems, early drafts so for #bivisibilityday here's one I wrote earlier, in Queerlings issue 9: drive.google.com/file/d/1gR1k...

Happy #bivisibilityday! My 2nd one out. Growing up under Section 28 I assumed I was straight; there was radio silence on anything else. Even now it's assumed bi people in a relationship have 'picked a side'. I'm still bi & I still choose my wonderful husband: Love is about the person, not the bits.

Because nothing says zoom workshop with Glyn Maxwell like a pyrex jug of Aperol Spritz. The poem, you ask? Yes, I mixed that before I mixed the drink. I'm a professional 😜