Rhian Elizabeth here.
Parthian have given me control of their blog for the next month. Perhaps this will be a mistake on their part.
I’ve been asked to write as much as I can manage and whatever I feel comfortable with. Since I’ve been focusing on poetry this past year, I haven’t written prose in a really long time, so whatever I can manage may not be very much at all. I’ve got to try and remember what a full stop is, where the caps lock is on my keyboard, and to fill the page with loads of words.
Becoming a poet has made me lazy.
I guess the main purpose of this blog is to talk about and promote my debut poetry collection. It’s called the last polar bear on earth but it isn’t about polar bears or global warming or anything like that, so sorry if you pick it up off the shelf or order it online thinking that it’s going to be some interesting and important David Attenborough type of thing. You’ll be sorely disappointed.
You won’t get polar bears, you’ll get lesbians.
What is my poetry about? What do I want to talk about over the next month on this blog? I don’t even know. I guess about being a writer. About being a mother. About having Multiple Sclerosis. About being gay.
I have written about all of these things in my collection but don’t take my word on any of it. I’m a mother of an almost teenager, but I still haven’t mastered the art of getting through those tense few hours in the morning between her waking up and going out the door to school without wanting to kill her.
I’m still learning how to be disabled. I’ve been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis for almost two years now, but I have no real idea what it is. Just that it’s a really shit, complicated disease. I’ve been gay since I was 14, but lesbians to me are even more mind boggling than a disease the world’s top neurologists can’t quite figure out.
I can only speak for myself.
I’ll also blog about the various readings and events I’m performing at with the new book and I’m going to interview some writers I think you should know about. I might post some poems if I can be arsed. I’ve just come back from a month travelling in Sweden. I will write about that too.
I’ve basically been asked to write about my life. So if you’re looking for a fast paced account of a thrilling, all action packed life of hospital appointments, verbal and physical incontinence, arguing with a teenage girl, swimming, drinking too much wine and writing miserable poems, then this is the blog for you.
Over and out. X
