The weight of words She wrote gothic horror about lotteries in small towns with small minds and houses on hills whom she imagined were alive. She wrote of madness and young girls trying to escape the future that awaited them. She wrote humorous short stories about being a housewife in the 1950s and the mayhem…
Author: insister_xz0h57
Brown Wren
She shuts her mouth and dresses like a brown wren.[1]This villanelle was written during the DRAW (Departing Radically in Academic Writing) Summer School held in December 2025 in response to a workshop delivered by Dr Mellie Green on using the technique … Continue reading She tries to lift her wings, but alas, they are tightly pinned…
Skulls and other pretty things
A pretty sight, I thought, a lady with a book and a blue guitar.[1]I always intended to post this piece to coincide with Halloween 2025, but last year the darkness that snaps at my heels found me running a little slower than usual—the seasons and the year have … Continue reading I remember that I stood…
Handed Down, Driven Far: Lessons in Love, Velocity, and Defying the Limits
The arrival of the TR6 I have Dad to thank for my love of small fast cars. In 1983 he drove a signal red 1969 Triumph 6 into our driveway and I exclaimed, “Is this really ours?” The TR6 was not in good shape, but I adored her anyway. Dad spent more years and money…
In the wake of grief and glioblastoma: Just write, anything
“I’m allowing myself, at last, to wait a long time with my sorrow. To wait with it as long as it takes” – Memorial Days.[1]I have loved the work of Geraldine Brooks for a very long time – particularly her novel The People of the Book (2008, Penguin Books). I found this book in favourite…
The solitude of a small red car
“The light changed; she turned onto the highway and was free of the city. No one, she thought, can catch me now; they don’t even know which way I am going.” — Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House [1]Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House, Penguin Random House, 1959/2009, p. 16. Without a…
Freedom, fear and fury in a bell jar
Sub Heading 4 Generate custom solutions with the possibility to create synergy. Amplify outside the box thinking yet be on brand. Link 4 Sub Heading 5 Demonstrating sprints in order to innovate. Build innovation to innovate. Drive outside the box thinking and try to think outside the box. Link 5 Sub Heading 6 Leverage cloud…
Professor Von H.
“But while I pondered I had unconsciously, in my listlessness, in my desperation, been drawing a picture where I should, like my neighbour, have been writing a conclusion. I had been drawing a face, a figure. It was the face and the figure of Professor von X engaged in writing his monumental work entitled The…
A heavy secret lies
A heavy secret lies in waiting to be sentenced, 7 years, 3 months and 19 days blacked away out of sight— Inside the stone walls her writing watches[1]Hélène Cixous, (1998), Coming to Writing and Other Essays, Harvard University Press, p. 3., eyes closed and attendant. She wraps a crocheted pink shawl[2]Emily Dickinson, (1970), “Shame…
Odd shoes
Today she chose to wear odd shoes. The left white with embossed flowers, the right spangled with stars, In the mismatch of this truth there was nothing to lose. A social experiment not yet abandoned at the feet of dreams in recluse. What a life awaited in the toes of boots painted red! …