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An introduction to the fifteenth edition
Welcome Hello again old friends and new friends alike. It’s the season of love. Valentines is either a sweet or bitter memory for many of us, but let us not get our heads crowded with […]
In defence of the joyful writer by Beverley Ward
I took my teenaged son to an intimate gig with bluegrass singer, Lewis Pugh, last night. It’s our new favourite pastime, to explore the musical scene of our hometown, this steel-strung city. Because, after fourteen […]
Poems by Mark Connors
Mark Connors is an award winning writer, creative writing facilitator and publisher from Leeds, UK. Mark has had over 300 poems published in magazines and anthologies. His debut poetry pamphlet, Life is a Long Song was published by OWF Press in 2015.
My Friend Oliver by CS Mee
I always asked for him first, before they even took my coat. I would search for his face, his gait, the red lace-ups that caused him so much trouble.
Poems by Charlotte Oliver
Charlotte Oliver is an Ilkley Literature Festival New Northern Poet 2023 and was recently Lead Artist for the Yorkshire Coast on Spoken Word Power 2024. Published widely in journals and anthologies including Candlestick Press’ Christmas Walks, she has placed in a number of competitions including Wirral Poetry Prize, the Patricia Eschen Poetry Prize 2022 and Wetherby Festival Poetry Competition.
Poems by Kathy Miles
Kathy Miles lives in West Wales. Her work has appeared widely in magazines and anthologies, and her fifth full poetry collection, Vanishing Point, was published by Palewell Press in April 2024. She was the winner of the 2024 Frogmore Poetry Prize, and is a previous winner of the Bridport Prize.
The Long, Slow Taste of Disappointment by Emma Phillips
I taste people. Where others form first impressions with their eyes, I see in flavours. The man on the bus is chicken fried in oil. Our neighbour, Julie, is a doughnut.
Poems by Amy Fox
Amy Fox loves writing, nature and the outdoors. She is especially passionate about connecting people with the nature on their doorsteps and enjoys appreciating small, often overlooked details while finding fresh ways to observe and celebrate them.
Poems by Safa Maryam
Safa Maryam is a poet and doctor from the North. Her work has appeared in Dear Damsels, Mslexia, Medical Women, and Anthropocene amongst others. Most recently her work has been anthologised in Thresholds (Butcher’s Dog Publishing 2024) and COAL (Smith|Doorstop 2024).
The Deer and Alice by Jon Rand
I wasn’t allowed but I followed him. Daddy had a gun and I followed him. I got so close, but he never saw me. Then the bang went around and I saw. He killed her.
Poems by Philip Waddell
Philip Waddell was born in the former British Guiana but has now lived for long enough in his Oxfordshire village to properly qualify as a villager. Since the 90s his poems for children and young people have appeared in anthologies by Macmillan, Bloomsbury, Scholastic, Nosy Crow and many others.
Poems by Jen Feroze
Jen Feroze lives by the sea in Essex. Her work has appeared in publications including Acumen, Under the Radar, Butcher’s Dog, Poetry Wales, Black Iris, Magma, And Other Poems and Berlin Lit.
Atch Ere Kokkero by Nelson Stanley
Our mother dies and the old man locks himself in the rusting pickup for days at a time. We eat store-brand breakfast cereal for almost all of our meals; sometimes our Travelling cousins drive down […]
Poems by Nick Fordham
Nick Fordham is a children’s doctor but dreams of his other life away from the hospital reading and writing poems and stories. He annoys his own children with poems, and has work published in The Dirigible Balloon and Ars Medica.
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE FOURTEENTH EDITION
Welcome It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, as the song says and adverts constantly remind us. However, unlike just about everything else at this time of year, we’re not about to cost you […]
How to write a page-turner for children by Piu DasGupta
When my children’s debut, Secrets of the Snakestone, was published in March this year, I made the big mistake that all experienced writers counsel against: looking at the reviews on Goodreads…
Poems by Anna Llewellyn
Anna Llewellyn is a Welsh writer, illustrator, and literary editor living in New York City. Her work has appeared in The Toy Press, Cleaver Magazine, and Bartleby Snopes, and her plays for children have been produced across New York state.
Urban Stargazing by Patience Mackarness
When we lived in the Bullring we had balconies in the air. They were our playgrounds, me and Jimmy and John, and all our mates like Kitty next door and Eddie downstairs. The Bullring wasn’t a ring really, it was a long curve of tenements made out of brick and concrete, with a wide balcony that ran past the front doors on all four floors.
Poems by Rachel Cleverly
Rachel Cleverly is a poet, playwright and producer. Her debut pamphlet, Prickle, is forthcoming with flipped eye publishing. She is a Barbican Young Poet and an Old Vic Theatre Maker.
Poems by Sarah Ziman
Sarah Ziman is a poet from Wales who likes cats, crisps, cake, reading and rhyme. She dislikes writing bios. She won the YorkMix Poems for Children Prize 2021, and enjoys annoying her own children by forcing them on nature walks or ‘dragging them into antique shops’. ‘Why did my Brain make me say it?’, her debut collection for children, is coming very soon.
Vaguely Gracious Moonsong by Garglestone
They lived in a tall gaunt house near a river.
The mother was a painter, a bad one. Her head was full of dreams of magpies. She was bitter, intelligent, theatrical when drunk.
Poems by Tim Relf
Tim Relf’s work has appeared in such titles as The London Magazine, The Rialto, Under the Radar, The Interpreter’s House, Banshee, Acumen, Bad Lilies, Stand, The Spectator and The Friday Poem.
Poems by Vicky Gatehouse
Vicky Gatehouse is a zoologist, poet, volunteer tree-planter and children’s writer based in West Yorkshire. Her children’s poems have featured in Tyger Tyger, Dirigible Balloon, The Toy and Pan Macmillan anthologies. Vicky also writes picture books and was recently shortlisted for the Searchlight Awards and runner up for the Write Mentor Picture Book Prize.
Son of a Not Boat Person by Ya Lan Chang
You’re ten and walking out of your école élémentaire when some kids holler, ‘Your maman’s a smelly boat person!’
Poems by Debi Knight
Debi Knight is a Neuro-diverse poet and short story writer based in West Yorkshire who considers herself a lifelong student. She writes the life she sees and feels around her – exploring connections between humans, nature and the effects of modern life on all.
Poems by Laura Theis
Laura Theis’ work appears in Poetry, Oxford Poetry, The Caterpillar, Magma, Rattle, Tyger Tyger, Aesthetica, iamb, etc. Her Elgin-Award-nominated debut how to extricate yourself (2020), an Oxford Poetry Library Book-of-the-Month, won the Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize. A Spotter’s Guide To Invisible Things (2023) received the Live […]
The Simple Things by Georgia Boon
The car is thudding in and out of holes in the road. I can’t tell where anything is until I’m driving over it. But I’m used to that. We haven’t had streetlights since I was a kid, and they stopped making headlamps a decade ago. No-one goes out in the dark apart from me.
Poems by Jane Burn
Jane Burn is an award-winning poet, artist, poet and hybrid writer. She is a working-class person with autism. Her work is widely published and anthologised. Her current collection, The Apothecary of Flight, is published by Nine Arches.
House Anthems by Ralph Dartford
The final collection in Ralph Dartford’s ‘Recovery Trilogy’ sees the poet meditating on the tragic death of his beloved brother, Joseph, and how he lived in the mythical house of England: a nation of waving flags seen through soft focus sunlight.
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE THIRTEENTH EDITION
Welcome. Thirteen is supposed to be unlucky. Now, we’re not a tremendously superstitious bunch. We try not to walk under ladders, but we don’t steer clear of black cats and you won’t catch us chucking […]
The Writing Reader by Jo Bell
Reader, if you have a printer then print this article out, step away from the screen and read it in one sitting. I say this because I’ve been thinking about reading, and reading about thinking. […]
The Coconut Shell by Jeremy Hinchliff
Floods spread out like a bad feeling, getting everywhere you could imagine. They did so by stealth, bringing fear, as though a murderer was on the loose, not just an extra ten square miles of water. Rivers crossed smaller rivers and absconded with them.
Poems by Penny Sharman
Penny Sharman started writing poetry in her fifties. She is inspired by wild landscapes and relationships between the seen and unseen. She is a published poet, photographer, artist and therapist. Penny has an MA in Creative Writing from Edge Hill University, has had poems published in The North, Mslexia, Candlestick Press and many others.
Poems by Barbara Bleiman
Barbara Bleiman is an ex-English teacher and education consultant at the English and Media Centre (EMC), with a keen interest in poetry. She has written numerous articles and blogs and a book about English teaching, What Matters in English Teaching.
Adrift by Erin Braithwaite
Barbara from channel four is halfway through her report on the boats when it happens. The sudden silence. The red of her blazer is replaced by a blue screen.
NO SIGNAL.
Check your internet connection and try again
Poems by Caleb Parkin
Caleb Parkin, Bristol City Poet 2020 – 22, has poems in The Guardian, The Rialto, The Poetry Review and was guest poet on BBC Radio 4’s Poetry Please. He has three pamphlets.
The Think Chair by Rachel Burrows
Today, I had to sit on the think chair. Because I ate Maggie’s lunch.
‘It was not yours to eat,’ the teacher said.
‘But I was hungry,’ I said, but not out loud.
I had to sit on the think chair and think.
Exotic Crash by Barry Charman
The morning after the exotic crash, Zeff wasn’t sure what could be done. He’d spent hours making calls, telling everyone who needed to know. Most of them were asleep, some of them couldn’t even understand.
Poems by Tommy Sissons
Tommy Sissons is a novelist, poet, playwright and educator based in London. He is the author of the polemic ‘A Small Man’s England’, and the novel ‘Cautious, A Boat Adrift’.
Poems by Claire Schlinkert
Claire Schlinkert is a British children’s writer, currently living with her family in Belgium. She loves writing poems and playing with words, and she has published her writing in anthologies and magazines, including Tyger Tyger, The Toy and Little Thoughts Press.
The ocean is only there to make us feel stupid by Mark Holmes
You picked up a stone and threw it hard, overarm towards the horizon, dusting the sand from your fingertips onto the oversized woollen jumper that hung low beneath your zipped up cagoule.
Poems by Andrea Holland
Andrea Holland has two collections of poetry, ‘Broadcasting’, which won the Norfolk Commission for Poetry and ‘Borrowed’ (Smith/Doorstop) a first-stage winner in The Poetry Business contest. Individual poems appear in journals and anthologies.
Silver Linings by Liam Hogan
The horse pulled up with a snort in front of the next dwelling on their list. The wizard, dozing in the cart behind, tugged the floppy hat from her eyes and did a double blink. An unusual place to live. But this was the Enchanted Forest, where building permission was granted retrospectively by council workers wary of the threat of curse and counter curse.
Getting Away With Murder: The Art of Writing Suspense with Russ Thomas (22nd August, online)
Russ Thomas is the bestselling author of the DS Adam Tyler novels, which include Firewatching, Nighthawking, Cold Reckoning, and his latest work Sleeping Dogs. He is published by Simon and Schuster in the UK, G.P. Putnam’s Sons (Penguin Random House) in the US, and is represented by Sarah Hornsley of Peters, Fraser + Dunlop.
Welcome to the Gravy Post
A brand new feature from Northern Gravy. News direct to your inbox covering our thoughts on all things Poetry, Fiction and writing for Children. Plus tips on how to get published by us!
How to and how not to write a memoir, with Vicky Foster (18th July, 2024.)
Vicky Foster is an award-winning writer, performer and poet who has broadcast extensively across the BBC. In this practical workshop, Vicky Foster discusses her new memoir, “It Happened Like This.” There will also be essential exercises on how you could write one too!
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE TWELFTH EDITION
Edition Twelve is here, and it marks the end of year two of Northern Gravy. Two years is, paradoxically, both a long time and a very short time. It seems like only yesterday we were […]