Tuesday, October 31, 2017


I'm officially addicted to writing sequences - I just can't seem to help it!
Autumn has always been a good writing time for me and autumnal poems have been spilling out of me over the last few weeks. So I guess I'm back to writing shorter, imagistic (but in sequences!) poems for now.

I've made Tomas Transtromer my current mentor poet - trying to work out how he comes up with those absolutely perfect metaphors, and how the inner and outer worlds come together so fluidly in his poems.

Transtromer was a psychologist and I've always been drawn to his dream-like poems, I occasionally use dream images / events in my own poems and have started recording a dream diary again. I particularly like how he zones in on the narrator's experience of the here and now - the eternal present. I'm doing a counselling skills course at the moment and it's challenging me very much to think about my feelings in the present - and of course this is all seeping into my poems.

I have a few poems out in submission, it feels good to have a growing number available - though I'm impatient to hear back!



Tuesday, October 10, 2017

"Scottish nationalist and feminist perspectives are refracted through a singular imagination drawn to the elemental... McCready is interested in the mysteries of birth and death, the mutability of matter, nature, myth, female experience and history as narrative of women's lives."
Delighted to read a review of Madame Ecosse in the latest issue of Poetry Review. It was reviewed by Ellen Cranitch and paired with her review of Dalgit Nagra's latest collection, which was an honour.

I'm also super-pleased to have a poem accepted for an anthology of poetry commemorating the centenary of W.S Graham - I'm so pleased to see W.S Graham and his work remembered, he is my favourite Scottish poet and I would love to see his work better known and his talent recognised.

A busy season of work and study has left little time for poetry so I'm sitting on the bare bones of at least four poems waiting on serious attention. Thankfully the busy season is coming to an end so I'm hoping to get stuck back into writing soon!