Kathy Pimlott

April 2026

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Ta-da! Unusually, I have written a new poem this month - from scratch - not twittering around with existing drafts. It arose from going to see a film about the artist Steve Dilworth who, until very recently, lived and worked on the Isle of Harris. The film was made by an old friend and that was why I went. Steve took part in a Q&A afterwards. I had many, many questions but, being polite, only asked one - which was how much it mattered that we, the viewers/consumers of his work, knew the stories behind them (Steve is a natural digresser) or what was hidden inside? This question stayed with me, niggling away until I had to write through it.  Which is the way that most of my poems start. It's like litter catching on fallen branches in a not very big but quite fast-flowing stream. Not always but sometimes, I have to inch my way down the overgrown bank and see what it is, caught there.  

I think a lot of us have read The Artist's Way - well, if the number of people who do morning pages is anything to go by, and one of the lessons from the book is to go to the well - get out there and see what is happening in the wider world of making. It works.

And 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. 

​I’m reading

Diane Seuss's Modern Poetry (Fitzcarraldo); Ian Harker's Gain Access (smith|doorstop); and ​Magma 94