Hello, I’m Meryl. I write poems and prose and make occasional sound pieces for fun.
The other thing I do with my life is teach! I love it. I taught secondary school English and Drama in my twenties and thirties, and then spent some time as a freelance educator in museums, before teaching creative writing and poetry for a range of educational institutions. I’ve given creative writing workshops in schools, prisons, museums and city squares – and taught for the Arvon Foundation, Morley College and the Poetry School, too.
At present, I teach creative writing at the University of East Anglia.
I’m interested in place, environment and interiority’s encounters with the same – and I’m currently working on
- a whole bunch of new poems for a new collection provisionally called Menstruant
- a creative non-fiction book which thinks about place, personhood, poetry and the Anthropocene urban pastoral – and is due out from Penned-in-the-Margins in 2022.
Publications:
My third poetry pamphlet, Wife of Osiris, was published by Verve Poetry Press in May 2021.
Natural Phenomena, (2018, Penned-in-the-Margins) was the Poetry Book Society’s Spring Guest Selection for that year, Highly Commended in the Forward Prizes, a Poetry School Book of the Year and long-listed in the 2020 Laurel Prize.
Hello Meryl
I had to rush off at the end yesterday so I didn’t get to say that I enjoyed your talk.
You might be interested in this conference next week: http://enhanceitn.eu/thefutureofwildeurope/
( a bit short notice, perhaps).
Best wishes
Andrew Jeffrey
Andrew, thank you! Enjoyed yours too, I think your work so interesting (and the poems you shared, would love to encounter them again at close quarters – publications?). I think our interests are well aligned, shall be following your work closely! All best, Meryl