Kathy Pimlott

January 2026

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2025 ended with a much-needed writing residential with the Poetry Business's Ann and Peter Sansom and other delightful poets in Cober Hill, outside Scarborough. As well as some serious morning work using prompts to generate what will hopefully be exceptional (!) poems of our own, plus afternoon workshopping, we failed utterly to identify well known-poets' work and each others' in our evening quizzes, heard way too many Tommy Cooper jokes, laughed a great deal and managed the odd walk down to the sea. I came away with three possible drafts - a very good strike rate for me.

For those like me who have long periods of no writing happening, I recommend having a listen to this very reassuring BBC Radio 3  programme, When the Words Leave  in which Caroline Bird talks with poets, including Marie Howe, Vanessa Kisuule, Liz Berry, Jack Underwood and Hannah Copley, to explore those times when it feels as if words have abandoned us. 

Ferreting among old poems in the hope of finding something,  I must say I still like the odd poems I've written to make myself laugh, poems which hardly ever see the light of day because I seldom submit them anywhere. It is, therefore, a great pleasure to have one such, about being in a school play, in the winter issue of The High Window - a very small load of nonsense that delights me. Also included there is what should be a more serious poem about radiotherapy, but that makes me laugh too. Unaccountable but there we are. And I have a definitely more serious poem in Finished Creatures this month, where the theme is Trespass.

Wishing everyone a peaceful and hopeful New Year. x

​I’m reading

Diane Seuss's Modern Poetry (Fitzcarraldo); Rachel Spence's Daughter of the Sun (The Emma Press); Suzannah Evan's Green (Little Betty); Claudine Toutoungi's Emotional Support Horse (Carcanet) and Pam Thompson's Sub/urban Legends (Paper Swans Press)