The submissions window for ‘Dwelling’ is open from 1st June – 31st July 2020. We welcome poems that have not been previously published, either in print or online. Up to 4 poems may be sent via Submittable, or by post if you live in the UK. Postal submissions are not acknowledged until a decision is made. [...]
Introduction
Zoë Brigley Thompson is the author of three books of poetry: Hand & Skull (2019), Conquest (2012), and The Secret (2007), all published by Bloodaxe. She also has a collection of nonfiction essays, Notes from a Swing State (Parthian 2019), and edited the academic volume Feminism, Literature, and Rape Narratives (with Sorcha Gunne).
Recommendations
"Brigley's sense of social justice is woven with delicacy and strength, in a voice that is neither daunted nor hectoring. She is attuned to the most subtle forms of both violence and hope, and so with often startlingly beautiful imagery can offer the reader new ways of gathering morale in disheartening times." -- Emily Trahair
about this site
Back in 2004, I started a blog called The Midnight Heart via Warwick Blogs, which the Times Higher Education Supplement listed as one to watch. This new site is a continuation of what I started there.
Blog
Poetry Film: ‘Un/dressing Poems’
Today is the day that my poetry film 'Un/dressing Poems' is released into the wild! The poems were originally published in the magazine Copper Nickel out of University of Colorado, Denver, and I am really grateful to the editor Wayne Miller. They also appear in my new collection Hand & Skull, where they work to [...]
Announcing Winners from the Battered Moons Poetry Competition
The Battered Moons Prize-giving at the Big Poetry Weekend Imagine if we were suddenly given the supernatural ability to hear people’s thoughts. It’s a source of longing and desire - that feeling of almost wanting to climb into each other’s skins, to be so close to another human being that we could hear what they [...]
Playlist for Notes from a Swing State
I might be trying to distract myself from hard Brexit developments (!!!), but I just wrote up this playlist to go along with my new nonfiction book: Notes From A Swing State. I am a popular culture junkie, and songs come up quite a bit in the book, all having some personal or political meaning [...]
Unicorns in America
My 5-year-old son has decided he doesn't like unicorns anymore. “Unicorns are for girls,” he tells me. “The boys in school said so.” I bought him a unicorn T-shirt but lately he only wears it at home. I try to encourage him, but I also think back to my own childhood: how my wise, feminist [...]
Trauma, Poetry, and Punctuation
Edward Burne Jones: Proof of an illustration designed by Burne-Jones for the Kelmscott "Chaucer": p.441, 'The Legend of Goode Wimmen'; Philomene, with a woman (Philomela) standing by her loom holding a shuttle in an interior, with a half-woven tapestry with the story of Pholomene and Tereus, looking out of the window. 1896 I have been [...]
Battered Moons Poetry Competition: What do I look for in a poem?
I am judging the Battered Moons poetry competition this summer. There is just a week to go until the deadline (June 30th, UK residents only) so here I answer the question, what do I look for in a poem? 1. I have eclectic taste. I do not exclude any school or movement from my reading: [...]
Letter from Ohio 2025: A Speculative Fiction
Recently, some scary things have been happening in Ohio in relation to anti-abortion legislation. At the same time as these debates began to take on a new urgency, Welsh writer Robert Minhinnick asked me to contribute to a project called "Letters from the Future," which sees a collective of writers creating imagined letters from a [...]
Real Sex Ed?
What kind of sex education did you have, if you had any at all? I’m always interested in hearing about people’s experiences of sex education in school, but whatever your experiences have been, I can bet that it was not as helpful as it could have been. Yeah, remember these from sex ed class? [...]
On Smiling, Or Not
A feminist call might be a call to anger, to develop a sense of rage about collective wrongs.– Sara Ahmed Most women have had it happen to them. Walking back to the car one day after work, I am thinking about all the things I have to do, when a man stops me. “You should [...]
