Having moved from Sussex to Suffolk just before Easter, we’re settling well and it’s fascinating to observe what comes up and out in the new garden. The Beast from the East has delayed spring up there (we’re at least three weeks behind the south-east) so we’ve had the gift of two springs this year! Recently…
Author: Clare Best
I am Clare Best – poet, writer, librettist, teacher of creative writing.
My first career was as a fine bookbinder. I've also worked as a bookseller, and for many years as an editor.
Poetry publications: Treasure Ground (HappenStance 2009), Excisions (Waterloo Press 2011), Breastless (Pighog Press 2011), CELL (Frogmore Press 2015), Springlines (Little Toller 2017), Each Other (Waterloo Press 2019), End of Season / Fine di stagione (Frogmore Press 2022), Beyond the Gate (Worple Press, 2023).
Memoir: The Missing List (Linen Press 2018).
‘The Missing List’ to be published by Linen Press
I’m delighted to share the news that my memoir The Missing List will be published by Linen Press. Lynn Michell, founder and publisher at Linen Press, has announced our collaboration here. I started writing this memoir almost fifteen years ago, in small patches, having no clear idea what it might become. I wrote the patches…
Virtual class
Last night I spent three strange hours in front of my MacBook. Normally, time with my MacBook is at worst obligatory (bill paying, filing tax returns, marking papers – none of which is particularly strange) and at best treasured (writing, reading, listening to music). So – yesterday evening I co-delivered my first live online teaching…
Interview for BMJ Medical Humanities Blog
Many thanks to Louise Kenward for interviewing me for a piece published today on the BMJ Medical Humanities Blog in which we talk about the new extended version of Breastless (published at Life Writing Projects) and about creativity when facing surgery. Louise Kenward is a visual artist based in East Sussex. She was awarded an MA with…
‘Life Writing Projects’, harvests and dreams
It’s past mid-September. Summer is a mirage behind us. Back there – over my shoulder – are silvery skies, long walks by the sea and light evenings with family and friends. Autumn brings harvests, and fresh starts. Earlier this year I wrote two reflective essays about breast cancer in my family and about becoming breastless,…
Something about the importance of poetry
Today, one year on from the EU membership referendum, I’m posting an edited version of a piece I wrote for Agenda, at the invitation of Patricia McCarthy, back in June 2016, which now seems like a hundred years ago. That issue of Agenda – ‘The Power of Poetry’ (Vol 50, nos 3-4) is bursting with…
Springlines at Tunbridge Wells Museum & Art Gallery, 9 June – 14 October
The latest Springlines exhibition has been in the plotting stages for at least two years, so I’m really excited to report that the show opens at Tunbridge Wells Museum & Art Gallery on 9 June and will run until 14 October. The town of Tunbridge Wells came into being thanks to the mysterious rusty red…
‘Eric Gill: The Body’ at Ditchling Museum of Art & Craft, until 3 September
Ever since I first came across Eric Gill’s work for The Golden Cockerel Press when I was a student of fine bookbinding, I have admired his art whilst feeling an intuitive ambivalence about his portrayal of the female body. So when Fiona MacCarthy’s biography of Gill was published in 1989, revealing (from Gill’s meticulous diaries)…
Working hard in paradise
I have never before been away for two weeks to an artists’ residence or colony, just to write and work to my heart’s content, but I can really recommend Fundacion Valparaiso if this is something you feel inclined to do. The formula, to my mind, is perfect: each artist has their own large studio/room (if you…
Welcome 2017 and bring on the Parsnip Soup!
Three weeks into the New Year and I haven’t broken a single New Year’s resolution. But that’s because I don’t much like resolutions and I didn’t make any. Resolution implies something that can be decided on, put to bed, removing all doubt. I don’t think life is like that. And one of the earlier meanings…
Clare Best 