Kathy Pimlott

December 2025

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December has started off 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. 

I do like, though, 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 in a recent issue of The Alchemy Spoon - and what makes me laugh here is that I rhyme 'biscuit' with 'piqued'. I also have one about being in a school play in the winter issue of The High Window - a very small load of nonsense that delights me. Unaccountable but there we are. And I have a more serious poem upcoming in the next Finished Creatures, where the theme is Trespass.

Wishing everyone a peaceful and joyful Christmas. 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)