Clare Best
@clarebest.bsky.social
reading, looking, listening carefully; paying attention; writing clarebest.co.uk also @cbestphd.bsky.social posting bits and pieces around my doctoral research #poetry #memoir #lifewriting #teachingwriting #CSA #OUPGR #opera #libretto #materialculture
This post below contextualizes a truly exceptional essay published in the BMJ Medical Humanities. (link therein) The "lyrical essay" combines prose, poetry, memoir & statistics into a powerful vehicle centering two CSA survivors' voices. Its powerful & distressing - its the voices we need to hear.
Patricia Debney@patriciadebney.com · 6mo agoThe starting point: how is child sexual abuse represented in the arts, if indeed it is represented at all? Looking for ourselves in books, films, plays, visual arts, and music is a human thing. We look outward as ways of looking inward.We look outward to reflect upon our own lives and experiences.
The starting point: how is child sexual abuse represented in the arts, if indeed it is represented at all? Looking for ourselves in books, films, plays, visual arts, and music is a human thing. We look outward as ways of looking inward.We look outward to reflect upon our own lives and experiences.
on representation
In the Land of Peaks and Troughs (see my last post), here's how I (we) climbed to Peak 1. The starting point: how is child sexual abuse represented in the arts, if indeed it is represented at all? Looking for ourselves in books, films, plays, visual arts, and music is a human thing. We look outward as ways of looking inward.
patriciadebney.com
A new blog post, with news of a lyric essay published in BMJ Medical Humanities. Proud of this. clarebest.co.uk/2026/04/21/s...
Soundings
I am proud to share news of the publication of a lyric essay that I have co-authored with my colleague and friend Patricia Debney (also a survivor of child sexual abuse (CSA), also abused by her fa…
clarebest.co.uk
Finally made it to the V&A East Storage where I swooned at the Frankfurt Kitchen. These were designed by Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky for German social housing in 1926 and were the forerunner of the ‘fitted kitchen’. Such beautiful simplicity. #V&A #frankfurtkitchen #london #architecture #design
A bump for this guest @northseapoets.bsky.social post. I've always loved this Auden poem and I have always loved the notion of an imaginary friend. So here I am writing about both: open.substack.com/pub/northsea...
Auden's 'Imaginary Friends'
NSP Guest Post! Andrew Neilson on how the literati cope as Rome falls
open.substack.com
Wouldn’t it be something if Royal Lodge, Windsor, could become a retreat / shelter for victim survivors of #sexualabuse and #sexualassault? #survivorsvoices #CSA #rapecrisis #survivor #SA #DV #MeToo
Submissions are now open for issue nine. The theme is Trespass: rights and wrongs; encroachment and colonisation; faults and forgiveness. Please see the website (link in bio) for information and guidelines. Window closes August 31st. 🕊 xx
Gorgeous miniature binding by Gabrielle Fox of my poem ‘The bookbinder’ - what a gift! #finebookbinding #miniaturebooks
New post on #Substack from @johnglenday.bsky.social Robert Frost's Eyebrows – John Glenday on words, syllables and cadence. #NorthSeaPoets #PoetryCommunity
Competition - Win copies of new book 'Bowie Land - Walking In The Footsteps of David' by Peter Carpenter.
Competition – Win copies of new book ‘Bowie Land – Walking In The Footsteps of David’ by Peter Carpenter
From Beckenham to Berlin, Peter Carpenter’s captivating tribute to David Bowie takes the reader on a mesmerising meander through the places that played a significant role in the music icon…
davidbowienews.com
North Sea Poets is shaping up to be a vital new collaborative poetry project. Writing on their #Substack at northseapoets.substack.com is superb. How could it not be when NSP is written/run by Kathleen Jamie, Niall Campbell, Don Paterson, Karen Solie, John Glenday, Lisa Brockwell, Lesley Harrison.
North Sea Poets@northseapoets.bsky.social · 2y agoNew post on #Substack 📰 The book all poets should read (but almost none have) @lisabrockwell.bsky.social reflects on a book that changes how we think of poetry 📚 #NorthSeaPoets #Poetry #PoetryCommunity
My next book, INTO BEING: will be published by MUP in October and I can now share the cover - it is part memoir, part teaching manual for those of you who love writing. It is one of the only books in the UK to focus on the craft of #memoir. Pre-order manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526179258/
Special offer from Longbarrow Press: any 3 hardbacks for £32. Includes collections by Steve Ely, Angelina D'Roza, Rob Hindle, Peter Riley, Nancy Gaffield, Mark Goodwin, Matthew Clegg, Fay Musselwhite, 'The Footing' anthology, and more longbarrowpress.com/current-publ...
Yesterday made a ⚡️ trip to Lewes to hear Neil Gower talk for LewesLitSoc about a life’s work with graphic art, books, maps, + his own writing. So moving to see Neil’s art for ‘The Missing List’ among the images projected. I love what he created & I’m so happy to have his painting on my study wall.
My review of Robert Hamberger’s latest collection – for The Friday Poem open.substack.com/pub/thefrida...
Tomorrow!
Faculty of English, University of Oxford@engfac.bsky.social · 2y agoTOMORROW (21 Feb) - please join us for the next Professor of Poetry lecture by A.E. Stallings @aestallings.bsky.social. This is a public lecture and all are welcome! No booking required. When? 5.30pm on 21 Feb Where? Examination Schools, Oxford #Cavafy #poetrylovers #Oxfordevents #PoetrySky
Wishing you a happy mid February, with the help of the five-year-olds of Keswick. kimmoore30.substack.com/p/love-and-o...
Love continues. Poem by Robert Hershon (1936-2021) originally published in Poetry Northwest, Autumn 2000.
A single word can be a lie. For example, journalists are still calling what Musk and his child army have been doing an operation in pursuit of government efficiency.... www.meditationsinanemergency.com/to-use-their...
To Use Their Language Is to Endorse Their Lies
Every crisis is in part a storytelling crisis, and the current one here in the US is also a language crisis. How we use the language and how we listen for lies that are in single words and phrases as ...
meditationsinanemergency.com
this is my mother’s cloth tape measure, and the embroidered felt case (complete with tiny button and button loop!) that she made as a schoolgirl in the mid-1930s… a wonderful small reminder of an age of handmade detail in everyday objects – bringing so much pleasure still 😌
This is what should be on every front page right now. What's happening in the US right now is an illegal power grab by a private citizen. IT'S A COUP. It's a digital coup. It's Musk who's leading it. The consequences are terrifying. And it's coming for us next. 1/ open.substack.com/pub/broligar...
IT IS A COUP
This is what should be on every front page in 150 point banner headlines. All I have is this Substack but I lay it beneath your feet and pray to a higher power that I'm wrong.
open.substack.com
The Bridport Prize is offering two fully funded writer residencies in Dorset for writers from The Midlands and/or The North West of the UK who are working class and/or 60+ From Sunday 22 to Friday 27 June 2025. Writers must be available for the whole period. Details in link. Please share :)
New! Fully funded writer residencies Working class and/or 60+ - Bridport Prize
bridportprize.org.uk
Things feel quite grim in the world. Poetry, as with much else, is battered by the elements: the doers struggle against the odds, while our thinkers are befuddled. But you know what? Bad Lilies returns later this month and we start typesetting TOMORROW. 😎
Since everybody seems to be talking about blurb culture in publishing this week, I wrote about a few memorable poetry blurbs someflowerssoon.substack.com/p/pinks-27-a...
Pinks #27: A Noise Like a Publisher
When poets write blurbs
someflowerssoon.substack.com
I had the sweetest dream last night. I was driving on the LIE and there was Donald Trump in a red jumpsuit, picking up trash beside the highway.