Category Archives: Write for Growth

Poems for Challenging Times 6

By juliamcg | Published: May 7, 2020

It has been wisely said that writing is as simple as going slowly enough to notice things and stopping long enough to put them down in words. It’s just that most people don’t take take time to do either. Billy Collins’ ‘Morning’ pays careful attention to everyday detail, somehow transforming the ordinary into a sacrament […]

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Journalling Through a Time of Corona 7

By juliamcg | Published: May 4, 2020

This is the seventh week of journalling prompts I’ve offered since lockdown started in what feels like way back when…After around 6 weeks, any novelty of the experience has worn off, and we may feel we’re facing the weariness of same old, same old. One of writing’s great qualities – alongside its capacity to help […]

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Poems for Challenging Times 5

By juliamcg | Published: May 1, 2020

Despite its somewhat apocalyptic title, today’s poem by Joy Harjo is as uplifting as it is haunting.   Harjo was born in 1951 in Oklahoma. As well as publishing nine poetry collections, she is a musician (playing saxophone in her band Poetic Justice) and author of two children’s books. In 2019, she became the first […]

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Journalling Through a Time of Corona 6

By juliamcg | Published: April 27, 2020

Last week I asked my journalling group what they wanted to write about in our upcoming online session. The response was unanimous: ‘Not Coronavirus!’ I found something similar when I ran creative writing sessions for cancer patients. ‘We don’t want to write about our cancer directly,’ said one. ‘It comes into the writing anyway, and […]

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Journalling Through a Time of Corona 5

By juliamcg | Published: April 20, 2020

As we continue in the lockdown and its dramatic interruption of what was once normal (remember when you could just pop out for a coffee with friends, mooch round the shops or go to the cinema?) we may notice some shifts in perspective around our once familiar life.  When things are take away that we […]

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Journalling Through a Time of Corona 4

By juliamcg | Published: April 13, 2020

  I wonder how you’re getting on in lockdown. Are your days carefully structured or more free-flowing? Hopefully, you’re finding a healthy balance. This interplay between structure and freedom is a feature of the writing process. So far my writing prompts have focussed on more structured exercises. Today I want to offer some suggestions around […]

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Journalling Through a Time of Corona 3

By juliamcg | Published: April 7, 2020

  One great thing about writing is that even if we are physically stuck in one place, our writing is not in lockdown. Although in recent days, the Foreign Office has warned against holidaying abroad, we can still travel with our pens. This week’s journalling suggestions focus on writing about place.  Before we set off, […]

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Poems for Challenging Times 1

By juliamcg | Published: April 4, 2020

David Whyte’s The House of Belonging is – literally – a long poem, but it is rich with possibilities and is indeed, itself about possibilities. The poem points to an epiphany of some kind, as light literally dawns. it marks a shift to a new settledness, a fresh awareness.  This poem, with its short, resonating […]

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Turning Points at Write for Growth

By juliamcg | Published: July 29, 2019

It so often happens: A Write for Growth topic I thought would be quite straightforward is more complicated than expected.  As we gathered at Gladstone’s Library earlier in July to explore our theme of Turning Points, we started by looking at Robert Frost’s deceptively simple poem, ‘The Road Not Taken.’ The reader can easily be […]

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Encountering Animals at Frodsham

By juliamcg | Published: April 21, 2018

Animal Encounters was our theme for April’s Write for Growth at Castle Park Arts Centre, amid the stimulus of the annual exhibition of the Association of Animal Artists This year’s exhibition is even more inspirational than last year, incorporating categories from Power and Pace of Life to Fragile World and Windows to the Soul. It’s […]

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  • About Julia

    Julia

    From writing stories for my younger brother, to penning poems for the School Magazine and filling a growing pile of personal journals, the written word has always been part of my life’s journey.

    I started out as an English Teacher and subsequently retrained as a Counsellor. I have counselled in a GP Surgery and worked with various Employee Assistance Schemes and Charitable Trusts alongside seeing private clients.

    Although I have done some freelance journalism and written four non-fiction books, creative writing has become my main focus in recent years.

    My poems have appeared online on sites including Amaryllis, Silver Birch Press, Clear Poetry, Spilling Cocoa Over Martin Amis, Riggwelter and Ink,Sweat and Tears. I have been published in Curlew and Bucks Mill Magazine, and anthologised in Our Hearts Still Sing. My first poetry collection, Chester City Walls, came out in 2015.

    Read more about Julia

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