Welcome to the Writers’ Corner, where words are not endings but invitations, to respond, to reflect, to continue the conversation.
Our current theme, “Continuing Conversations,” explores writing as dialogue: with the world, with others, with history, with silence. Whether in poetry, prose, essay, or experimental form, we invite you to consider writing not as a monologue, but as an evolving exchange.
Conversations can be loud or quiet, direct or layered, playful or confrontational. They happen between people, across time, between cultures, and within ourselves. In this space, we’re interested in work that listens as much as it speaks, writing that echoes, questions, builds upon, or breaks open a dialogue.
How does your writing connect to something beyond itself? What are the voices, literal or metaphorical, that your work is in conversation with? How do your words reverberate through personal, cultural, or imagined spaces?
This corner is for writing that lives in the in-between, between speaker and listener, statement and response, intention and interpretation.
Let’s keep the conversation going. As ever we start with our resident writers and Poet …
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Our Poet in Residence: Peter Devonald, always has a lot going on, with many of his works in up coming publications, awards and interviews all the information you need for these are either here or on our news blog…
Awards/ Interviews
· 2025 Interview on poetry, pressure & writing without compromise. Featuring brand new promo video & unpublished poems. Huge thanks to Alan Parry and Broken Spine Arts.
https://thebrokenspine.co.uk/2025/04/17/the-cut-with-peter-devonald/
2025 Interview/ Origins from New2theScene where I was runner-up in their 2024 competition. Huge thanks to Richard Howitt: https://www.new2thescene.co.uk/blog/peter-devonald-poetry 2025 Age Is Just A Number Commended Waltham Forest Age UK Poetry Competition 2025. Huge thanks to the judges Paul McGrane & Barry Coidan. Poetry Showcase: Thursday 12 June 2025, 2025 Spring Sorrow commended 3rd Flash Fiction contest Wildfire Words/Frosted Fire.
Bio.
Alison Griffin graduated with a degree in Fine Art from Central Saint Martin's in 2012 and has exhibited widely in group shows in the UK and further afield, including longlisted for the Jacksons Art Prize, exhibition "It's In The Trees It's Coming," curated by Sean Williams for Prosaic97 in Bloc Studios, Sheffield,, Mandell’s Gallery, Norwich, Holt Festival, North Norfolk and the Mall Galleries in London with the SGFA in 2025/2024/23/22/21. Shortlisted for The Sir John Hurt Art Prize 2024. She is represented by Cavaliero Finn and was elected an Associate Member of the SGFA (Society of Graphic Fine Art) in 2023. Griffin has art in private collections nationally and internationally and currently lives and works in Norwich, Norfolk.
Alison Griffin’s "The Day Comes, The Day Goes" is showing alongside a second work in RBSA gallery Drawing Prize 2025 Exhibition which opened on 29th May 2025 and runs until the 28th June. This piece has been commended at the RBSA. She wishes to thank the judges Brendan Flynn, Alison Lambert and Fiona Robinson and the organisers of the exhibition.
Alison Griffin was featured in the guest blog: https://www.haus-a-rest.com/new-page-53
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/alisongriffinartist/
Ekphrasis Poem
Peter Devonald
Blue Becomes You
After Blue Becomes You by Sally Scott
I’ve waltzed into you so many times,
lost in deepest blue,
silence becomes us.
Laid on dark velvet sands,
looked up, up, at flourishing skies,
watched as shades and hues change,
transmogrification, metamorphosis of azure
to witness miracles, this miraculous world,
to feel the sea and sky, deepening.
No line between oceans and horizon,
all this yearning, feeling, eternity,
embrace every breath, heart, transformation.
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Resident Artist Critic and writer - Michaela hall https://www.instagram.com/michaela_hall_artist/
Keep Talking…
Dialogue and conversation can come in many forms, words can say a lot and can mean a variety of different things to different people, depending how they are used and in what context.
Creativity is all about starting conversations and a dialogue with an audience, whether this is silent and less tangible through symbolism and metaphors or if its more literal with messages and ideas handed over on a plate. So in what way can artists play with text in their work to keep us ‘talking’ with them?
If you’re already aware of American artist Jenny Holzer, you’re probably already picturing her bold, fluorescent, and digital works that take over a space completely. Holzer is famous for her works that use text as their main component. Most eye-catching are installation pieces consisting of long rectangular screens playing bright CAPITALISED text, accompanied by flashing lights, bright colours, and an assault on the senses (in a brilliant way!).
What all of Holzer’s works have in common though, is their reliance on the word, and the conversation that this creates with the audience, Holzer feeds us messages through her pieces – often about power, feminism or society and with poetic sentiment. I’ve been lucky enough to see ‘Blue purple tilt’ (2007) at the Tate Modern in London, which is a series of 7 vertically propped up LED screens illuminated in blue and purple light displaying different messages from Holzer’s writings – such as ‘The true sound tells him that’ and ‘True freedom is frightful’.
All the messages displayed are the type of language that invites to the viewer to ponder – it’s like the audience is having a conversation with the artist just by standing looking at the piece and trying to make sense of it, which is a common theme when looking at her work. She knows how to engage the audience with words in a way they can’t ignore.
Both Holzer and Shrigley in their own way, keep us talking, they keep viewers of their work wondering what else they have to say and they have us second guessing what it might be.
This is the true power of conversation in dialogue in art, the power of a bond between creator and viewer that is tangible but in these cases also manages to leave space for us to fill the gaps.
In a more static but equally as effective way is the mastery of text from British artist David Shrigley in his works. If you don’t immediately recognise the name, you will probably recognise Shrigley’s artworks that have become extremely popular and appear all over from on tea towels in gift shops to high end galleries in exhibits.
Shrigley is loveable and his satirical drawings that comment on life in the modern-day win audiences over with their tongue-in-cheek humour and unapologetic sarcasm. ‘Untitled (Flowers still grow in your garden)’ (2021) features a pretty black and white drawing of a flower with a message ‘Flowers still grow in your garden even though you are a horrible person’ and ‘Untitled (Fuck)’ (2021) features a black and white drawing of a cute little robin, with a birdsong of ‘fuck’.
In his exhibitions, Shrigley often has lots of these drawings in combination, and I bet even from those two examples highlighted you’re building your own picture of his personality and what he might say next. And that is the mastery of his use of text, we feel we get to know him through his commentary in his drawings and we feel his drawings are really having a conversation with us, and are authentically his thoughts.
(Image courtesy of: https://hammer.ucla.edu/exhibitions/2002/david-shrigley)
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Artist name - Simon Williams
instagram - @kormeleon
Kitchen Conversations (Part One)
This morning at breakfast my attention was attracted
By the sound of angry voices coming from my kettle
Certain that if I listened just a little more carefully
I would begin to understand
I passed several hours in this way
Boiling and reboiling the same water
Switching off the fridge, microwave and boiler
In order to be able to give them my full attention
If I waited a while between boilings
The voices would sound even more angry
But their meaning still eluded me
Finally at quarter past four the kettle exploded
With a sound like a door slamming
And a small grey cloud of foul smelling smoke
Realising that it was too late to set off for work
I lit a candle, restarted the other appliances
Ate a cheese sandwich and went out to buy a new kettle
I would use its box to give the old one a decent burial
You would probably say I wasted my time
Or even wonder about my sanity
But the voices from the kettle wouldn’t
They gave their lives to be understood
The new one doesn’t even try
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Artist name -RauLa PaRmeL
instagram - https://www.instagram.com/a.d.h.diva.art_tv/
Para-Dice of Peace
My work: A lyrical nonfiction piece tracing inner and outer conversations across Torino’s museums, personal desire, and war trauma. Through chance encounters, political reflections, and longing for peace, the text explores how dialogue—between strangers, lovers, and self—can heal or haunt. A meditation on vulnerability, art, and the privilege of living in peace. Why me?: This text embodies the theme of "Continuing Conversations" by capturing layered dialogues—between the narrator and the people I meet, between memory and place, between art and emotion. It reflects how my personal and political experiences intersect, ripple, and transform through human connection. The piece doesn’t conclude a story—it keeps it open, alive, and evolving.
I went to the museum the other day –
It was my last day in Torino…
I had a meeting scheduled for the evening with friends. I should maybe say: colleagues.
Or maybe ex-lovers would be more precise in that particular moment.
We had been having some rough conversations lately, and I could not find peace within myself.The answer to all my questions was: I was not made for it.
Threesomes, casual flings, frivolous sexual experiences with no strings attached are not the reason I was brought into this world.
I knew it all along, but I just didn't want to admit it. I thought it was just too old-fashioned to always want to have one boyfriend to have sex with. It just seemed more fun to have friends with benefits, no involvement, no effort, just pure pleasure. So I tried. I let the dice decide what was going to happen to me.
At first, it was thrilling, arousing, and exciting. But when the game was over and I was there, lying on the big bed alone in an empty apartment, nothing made sense anymore.
The mental distance hurt me deeply, like a punch in the face that lingers long after the initial strike. The soulless sex drilled into me, reaching the core of my being. And there I was, like a hollow well—offering no water, no drop of hope.
I drugged myself with the Italian vacation style of life: visiting beautiful, luxurious spaces during the day and constantly drinking wine, digestivos, and spreetz; smoking weed every time we had a “fun time rolling dice.” My life became a cosplay for pleasure.
Then, I suddenly choked on it. My body shouted “no,” like it would after having pasta, focaccia, and pizza for every meal, five days in a row.
I desperately wanted peace... but my mind was like a book I had been reading at that time (The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart)—the story was shattered, disturbingly incohesive, leaving no room for hope.
I had written that scenario for myself without knowing it would cut me open with the sharp knife of lust, leaving only an ugly hole in my mind, leaking anxiety and self-resentment.
I came here for them, but I could not see them anymore—it was just too confusing and difficult. Why? Let me ask you a thing: Would it be OK for you to make friends with an object of your desire and let it remain - without hurting anyone on the way? Or would it be ok for you to objectify a friend?
When she was still in Ukraine, they almost died on the way to her family, who lived outside of Kiev. They ran out of gasoline, so they didn’t reach their destination, and the next day the town they were headed to was ruined by explosives.
“It is not a life...” she said, “...but a waiting porch. For how many days can you sit in the bunker, sometimes without electricity, and just … be scared!?”
It was almost three years ago, but she writes to me every Christmas and every Easter. She came back to her family in Ukraine. She prefers that over a half-life, surrounded by strangers. Even those fulfilled with compassion.
That made me understand some things to the core. I don't want to sound cliche to you.. but, well I am going to tell you anyway.
Bravery is a muscle that you train with circumstances.
Connection is the most powerful force, even stronger than the fear of losing your own life.
Body is a vessel for your energetic powers, but can be objectified and turned into a puppet that executes others peoples wishes.
And that my life—probably yours too—is built upon a momentous privilege that we all take for granted, and without which our bodies cannot truly belong to us: the privilege of peace.
Don't let them play cause peace must stay!
Going to the park in the evenings to hoop and putting my feet in the water of the Dora Riparia were two of the purest things I could do for my inner child. In those moments, I felt connected to my truth, my voice, my roots.
But let's return to the story I want to tell you. It’s very important for me to let you know that I’m not making it up—that you understand this is what really happened.
So, I went to GAM (Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Via Magenta, 31, 10128 Torino), and there I truly felt like myself again. The abstract forms helped me find something transcendent within me, a very subtle but persuasive voice saying, “Beauty and love are the same thing to you. Don’t reject it. Start building on it. It will get you further than attachment-less lust. It is just who you are... it is just who YOU are.”
I met a girl who worked there. We had a nice conversation about the meaning of art, which at that time, such a difficult time, translated for me as the meaning of life in general. I showed her my work, and she liked it. She told me I should visit Palazzo Reale before leaving Torino.
I came outside with the feeling that my heart was brighter, my mind clearer. I was purified by this encounter. Her name was Chiara (IT: bright, luminous), a clarity messenger with a warm, wide smile.
Visiting Palazzo Reale (Royal Palace) turned out to be more of a reality check than the royal splendor plunge I had imagined. Why? Because of the violence. The glorification of capturing the worst-case scenarios. The saint's blood, the nameless crowd, the faces contorted with convulsions. A game of chance played by white men... with innocent lives at stake. They want you to see it - and never forget- that they are the ones holding all the dice.
Look at them!!! Proud of their mighty countenance, pulling the strings of faceless puppets in shining armor. Burning, chopping, and trampling with horses. Look at me, they say! With an expression as rigid as stone, they tell you with their hollow eyes, “ I don’t doubt therefore I am. I am cruel, therefore I am mighty and powerful. I rule, I conquer, I hunger. I was born to spill blood, insatiable!”
I went there for the art-driven catharsis, but it didn’t want to come to me… It was—and still is—all too close to the truth that takes place on the right side of my homeland.
"I am really afraid to say out loud what my thoughts were then."
{A life of chance… Dependent on one guy who will never go to therapy to channel his need for total control into something positive and useful. Forever stuck risking it all to ‘show them that we can return to the country of the Tsars' glory days.’ A dance of power on a thin line, with my life hanging in the balance…}
At the end of the day, just before my last supper with my hosts, I went to the Museo Nazionale dell'Automobile. I was very worried and anxious because I suddenly remembered the world in which I live. I was feeling lonely again, and as always happens when I get overtaken by any feeling, I started to overthink.
I am sorry, I did not take any pictures that I could show to You.
I was watching vintage and luxurious cars, and my mind was wandering. I was carrying my sorrow along the museum, distracted from the present by my Polish internal dialogue.
The loop in my head was: Can love save us? Can art do it? And the one made from love? Can respect and acceptance survive in times of constant violation of human rights? Can I do something to prevent war? Is my life just a set of random circumstances? Would my sex life even matter if there were war in Poland or anywhere else in the European Union?
Then, suddenly, I heard a word in the distance—a sound that reminded me of my own national language. There was a woman with blond hair and a very Slavic face, saying something to a little girl she was holding by the hand. I wasn’t thinking logically; I just went toward her with a direct look on my face, asking in English, “What kind of language is this? Where are you from?”
She got anxious and put her daughter behind her, with a very scared look on her face, and asked me, “Why? Why do you want to know?” I immediately said, “I’m sorry.” I was ashamed of myself. My feelings of being a lost soul, confused by my own sexual needs and deprived of an attachment to something deeper—perhaps truer—made me scare an innocent woman and her baby.
“I’m sorry! I’ve been here in Torino for 40 days now, so once I heard a language that is Slavic, I just needed to talk to you. I’m so sorry. My name is Aleksandra, I’m Polish.”
Marija responded with relief on her face, introduced her daughter, and we walked through the exhibition together. She told me she was from Ukraine, that she had to run away because of the war. In the beginning, she wanted to stay, but as the bombardment got worse and worse, and the option of safe transport to Italy appeared, she decided to go. They came here by bus. A lot of wonderful people with warm hearts offered her help.
She said, “I am alive only because of the enormous luck and the selfless help offered by strangers.” She used to work in an office, but now she works at a can-producing company. The men in her family were still in the country—fighting, hiding, and trying to provide for their needs.
And if you are reading this and thinking, “What a boomer this chick is, in my circle everybody is polyamorous these days and having a ton lot of fun with it,” good for you. I am 100% ok with it - and let me tell You - I am very proud of you because YOU are making history within the realm of body-possession-relationships that are shifting the cultural paradigm for generations to come. And I am also jealous because I wish I could feel the same. I wish I could be free like a tropical bird, just spreading my colours around. But I just can’t.
—>I←- WAS NOT MADE FOR IT. It’s not my paradise.
RauLa PaRmeL
(ALEKSANDRA SZALIŃSKA)
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Artist - Sammy Hu
website/ instagram https://www.sammyhu1212.com/ https://www.instagram.com/sam_myhu
By intertwining family history with narratives spanning the past, present, and future, my film explores the nuanced dialogue of the mother-daughter relationship, delving into its complexities, emotional repercussions, and transformative potential. Through visual poetry and embodied performance, I examine intergenerational conversations shaped by biological, behavioral, and psychological factors, focusing particularly on the transmission of trauma and pathways to healing. Our biological conversations begin in the womb, as the very cells that form our bodies once existed within our grandmothers, silently carrying ancestral imprints through non-coding DNA and RNA—subtle dialogues reflecting past distress and resilience. Psychologically, these dialogues persist through subconscious echoes, where inherited behaviors from my mother profoundly influence my own interactions, manifesting as intangible ancestral whispers. At the heart of the film lies the emotional tension experienced by my mother—a housewife navigating traditional Chinese familial roles—captured vividly in her candid admission: "I love you, but I also feel conflicted… constantly sacrificing for you and losing myself." As she holds a bowl placed upon her back, she symbolizes being objectified and burdened by endless household chores. The textile component of the work, created through a sandwich heat press technique, layers discarded fabric from my grandmother, old family photographs, and yarn, representing the continuum of inheritance and the formation of self-identity. This poignant dialogue anchors the exploration of mutual understanding and emotional growth. Acts of physical reconciliation and self-soothing portrayed in the film reflect my childhood longing for maternal connection and comfort, symbolized by wrapping myself in yarn. Through these intimate visual and spoken dialogues, the film invites audiences into reflective conversations about family bonds, cultural identity, and the healing power inherent in shared vulnerability.
Mama I'm out of school I have the keys to our house But opened someone else's door The curtains are your skin The chair is your feet The scissors are your hands The bowl is your breast Your heart is throbbing behind the invisible cracks in the wall And you tell me This is not your house Your body is buried in the garden of your childhood" Through this artwork, I explore the complex dynamics of motherhood, identity, and generational attitudes toward womanhood. After years of distance, a heartfelt conversation with my mother revealed the deep sacrifices and struggles she endured in a traditional society. Her honesty about feeling both love and resentment inspired this piece. “I feel like I exist only as a container. At first, I did have moments of happiness as a mother. But over time, I began to feel that my existence was reduced to being a tool for others, and you became my sole purpose. Suddenly, people around me treated me kindly, but I knew it was only because of you. I do love you, my child, very much, but I feel so conflicted, as I've had to make endless sacrifices that no one knows.” This photograph, taken after our conversation and in collaboration with my mother, captures her emotions—an expression of her life’s unspoken challenges, now shared between us.
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Artist - Neil Adams
One half of a conversation about vegetarianism
Reflecting the imaginary debates we sometimes conduct with strangers in our heads, the increasingly fraught and fragile nature of conversation and the concept of offence.
One half of a conversation about vegetarianism.
I try not to think about it
with a mouth full of bacon
but I don’t think that I could kill a pig
and so, I have someone do it for me.
Not an assassin.
That would be needlessly expensive
and weirdly personal.
I’m not angry at the pig,
just hungry.
And so maybe, just maybe
I’ll try to cut back.
And yet
Amidst the dubious pleasure of a middle-class dinner party
As someone launches
an interminable
and increasingly proselytising monologue
on the wonders of their new, plant-based lifestyle,
I can’t stop myself from wondering:
“I wonder if that assassin is free?”
It’s not like he…whoops!... they
are busy with pigs.
I don’t want to alarm anyone
with this apparently frothy treatment of slaughter.
My tongue,
along with some lamentably under-seasoned lentils,
is very firmly in my cheek.
Like all of you here, I value every life.
Sort of.
Not equally, obviously.
Who’s got time for that?
I couldn’t find some of those countries on a map.
So, as a homicidal pacifist,
an inactive activist,
a self-loathing narcissist,
it turns out that the only kind of hypocrisy
that I can’t learn to live with
is that which I observe in others.
All I carry is this name
About the conversations that we avoid, the lack of communication in families and the consequences of never talking about what matters in a way that encourages forgiveness.
All I carry is this name.
Black sheep or shepherd, the crook was ever near
Pompous pirate; apostate; profiteer
That boy in the picture, doesn’t sound like me
The devil on his shoulder, well, maybe that could be
Grew to love the desert, I wondered forty years
in silence more quenching than the saltiness of tears
A castaway, maroon ,live blood upon the hands
Building falling castles from the shifting, hourglass hands
And don’t you take me back
To that endless summer blaze
The photographic calumny; your sepia-tented daze
The wrong may have been ended, the malady remains
The burdens that I parried
All I carry is this name
It’s yours to mine the motherlode of familial obligation
Wherever there’s a will you choose the way of abrogation
For every tic that toxifies, just beneath the skin
Of this aged, creaking, ill-repaired, ancestral machine
this stumbling tongue too clumsy for the language of affection
In deed, in constant striving to reflect some kind of heart;
The darkness that their shadows cast
was surely never meant to last
The son was never very far away
That tearful haze
Just hides you from the stars
Calls me to the far – the endless blue
That great cathedral that they blew to dust
the ripples tracing back to just
Before the years a family tree fell
with no one there to hear
And don’t you drag me back
To those endless summer days
into picture-album calumnies; your sepia-tented maze
The wrongs may be forgotten, the malady remains
The burdens that I parried
All I carry is this name
One night of coal-black charity
In years’ empire-rapacity
The giddy thought of reparation
The long road back from alienation
Leads once more to this stone garden
No release, no peace, no pardon
This shadowed space
Where traffic roars
Away
Like waves on distant shores.
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Artist - Delia C. Zorzoliu
website/ instagram -www.deliazorzoliu.art.blog / www.zorzoliucdelia.wordpress.com / @deliaczorzoliu
Dialogued Dialogue
"Dialogued Dialogue" is a poetic exploration of the complexities of human connection, delving into themes of love, happiness, and existential introspection. Structured as an intense, introspective conversation between two voices, the poem captures the essence of ongoing dialogue—both internal and external. It reflects the perpetual nature of conversations that evolve, challenge, and redefine our understanding of self and others. This aligns with the theme "Continuing Conversations" by illustrating how dialogue serves as a medium for personal and collective transformation.
