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Sophie McKeandI am in love with Sweden. It’s so similar in wet weather to Wales, & as green & glorious. Stockholm is an amazing city & I love hearing the wealth of languages as we travel Europe, although I’m now acutely aware of how little I understand the languages in these Northern European countries. I’ve had a difficult relationship with language & place identity. Because of a chaotic, transient upbringing nothing gives me anxiety more than the question, ‘where are you from?’ Knowing ‘who I am’ had to come before I could even begin to answer ‘where I’m from’, & still it’s taken a long time for me to answer. My (great) grandparents were economic migrants from across the British Isles to north Wales & just across the border in England. We’re English-speaking Welsh borderlands people. Truly understanding the country of my birth meant educating myself on the deliberate dismantling of Welsh language & culture by English oppressors, & so I learned Welsh, embraced the beautiful minority culture that I shared a landmass with. Did I then go too far? English, my first language, is that of oppressors, colonisers, & slave owners, but perhaps I began to take too much responsibility for that; maybe my connection to the very language in which I write & think & dream, that is the language of my ancestors & grandchildren, became disjointed as this schism deepened. I turned to creating literature as a way to explore this dichotomous life, employing narrative arcs in The MthR Trilogy to navigate through themes of language & place. I emerge from that piece of writing a different woman, someone who has made peace with herself, & her mother tongue; someone who can acknowledge the difficult history of the English language while still embracing this gorgeous international linguistic kaleidoscopic form of communication spoken by so many. <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/amwriting" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#amwriting</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/languages" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#languages</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/ddwyieithog" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#ddwyieithog</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/themthrtrilogy" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#themthrtrilogy</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/poetlife" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#poetlife</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/writing" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#writing</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/books" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#books</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/indiepublishing" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#indiepublishing</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/bookthoughts" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#bookthoughts</a>

Eryn McConnellI have major pre-release jitters today! This is my fifth collection of poetry. But that flutter of nerves never goes away! Fidgety fidgety. So today I am mostly reading, taking a walk and editing the novel. And staying away from double checking the poetry to make sure it's all there 😂<a href="https://mastodon.me.uk/tags/Today" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Today</a> <a href="https://mastodon.me.uk/tags/PoetLife" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#PoetLife</a> <a href="https://mastodon.me.uk/tags/PreReleaseJitters" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#PreReleaseJitters</a>

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