Common Room

Welcome

This is the space where we’ll host ‘Conversations’ around creativity and the Understory. These could be between members or with other commentators. And here we open with two Understory poems – perhaps in conversation with each other? Watch this space – and sign up to our Mailing List if you want email notifications – for more.

On Reclaiming Selves

John White chats to Charlotte about how writing can help us give voice to hidden parts of ourselves.

Crowded Silence

Sarah Barnsley chats with Kate Hendry and Charlotte Gann about their new Mariscat pamphlets.

A Door Opening

Colin Dixon chats with Charlotte about the things we know versus the things we understand; the intuitive ‘coding’ of coherence, and the spaces between words.

Emerging from Silence

Georgia Gildea’s debut poetry pamphlet bed is out now with V. Press. Georgia chats with Charlotte about how she worked in silence.

Why be Quiet?

Maxine Linnell talks with Charlotte about her new blog: mapping her experience of dementia.

On Wanting for Nothing

Suzanne Conway shares a poem, and talks with Charlotte about her love for running, and for writing, and what qualities the two share.

On Writing Our Selves

Celia Hunt discusses with Charlotte the importance of looseness and layering, and ‘imagined readers’ and making room in our writing.

Expressing an Essence

Elizabeth Chadwick Pywell shares a poem and chats with Charlotte about writing into a difficult encounter.

Writing Wrongs

Marilyn Ricci shares a poem from her new sequence, and chats with Charlotte about metaphor and trauma.

What Didn’t Happen

For this Understory Conversation, Lorna Dowell invites guest Lydia Fulleylove to talk about a poem from her new book.