Polly Atkin
@pollyrowena
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Writer, Lake-swimmer, Bookseller FRSL hEDS/Haemochromatosis/+ she/her rep @PortyLiterary Much with Body; Recovering Dorothy (2021) Some Of Us Just Fall (2023)
Grasmere
Joined July 2011
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Last Seen Profiles
@JayHulmePoet
Any high acidity pop will do it, but coke is classic. It works for many bezoars formed by undigested fruit/veg fibre, not just persimmons (?). Daily reality for many people living with slow gut motility or gastric delay. Please poets, don't see it as a fun quirk for a poem 😬
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One of the principles of disability justice is that no one should have to disclose private medical information in order to get the accommodations they need. It’s one of the many reasons I’ve been arguing for better covid protections for all. Requiring disclosure is harmful.
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I need everyone who is happy to ignore risks around covid to recognise that your friends/family/loved ones who can't ignore the risks are probably at the lowest low they've been emotionally in this whole never-ending pandemic. You can help too! Just show a little solidarity.
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Small note on the
#UCUstrike
. I'm not doing university teaching anymore, after 18 years. Why? Hourly pay has gone down from £40 per teaching hr in 2014 to £16 per contact hr in 2022. Contracts have gone down from 9 months to 10 weeks. 1 contact hour = 4-8 hrs work.
#ucuRISING
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901
BREAKING NEWS: ARTS COUNCIL ENGLAND DECIDES IT WILL NO LONGER FUND ART
APNews: Arts Council England (
@ace_national
) has updated its policies, warning that "political statements" made by individuals linked to an organisation can cause "reputational risk", breaching funding agreements (1/5)
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cw: euthanasia, filicide
.
.
.
.
I've heard
#TheLastOfUsHBO
has a disabled person killing themselves so nondisabled people live. This is 1 of the most tired & most dangerous narratives about disability. Dangerous, as it presents us as impossible burdens & expendable.
#Disability
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@marareboi
@JayHulmePoet
Yup! It can help dissolve blockages, basically. It's the acid plus the bubbles. You can find lists of phs of common soft drinks which are often meant to be warnings about them being corrosive but useful if you need that! Tonic water just as good as full fat coke for eg.
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After we heard the news this week that Marcus Sedgwick had died, we realised his book
#AllInYourHead
was finally available. Today, I'm asking every reader, writer, editor who has loved his work to pledge to read and to share this important, funny, moving book.
#Undiagnosis
#ME
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Publishing teams are always saying 'manage your expectations' like 'you're not going to get a review in
@guardian
' and 'we just can't get a wagtail to pose with your book' and sometimes you just have to look them in the eye and say 'I don't believe in that negative self-talk'.
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@TinyWriterLaura
as I said at the time - and since - the average plaster cast lasts longer that the 1st lockdown but even my own mum keeps telling me that everything is ruined now including all children's development because of it. 😑
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I keep writing this tweet then deleting it.
Everyone gleefully planning in-person events asap should realise they're excluding anyone who considers themselves or their household vulnerable. We're a long way from being mostly vaccinated & even that might not eliminate infection.
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Awful to see Will Mellor dancing through a "nasty virus", coughing all over the
#Strictly
studio tonight - not least as he clearly wasn't well enough to dance - but also terrible messaging in this
#OngoingPandemic
. No point being honest about mental health but not physical!😱😷
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Managed to catch these three snuggled up together before the two elder siblings flew off in opposite directions whilst littlest owlet hid.
#OwletUpdate
#Owlpdate
#Owls
#TawnyOwls
#OwlBabies
#Owlets
#OwlBebes
#BirdsOfLakeland
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Today's sun seemed to be making us all giddy, including this heron that came and landed just in front of
@ange_harker
and I as we were about to get in the water.
@BBCSpringwatch
#Swims
#LakeSwimming
#Heron
#GreyHeron
#CumbriaWildlife
#BirdsOfLakeland
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Respected children's writers and illustrators and a whole organisation and a whole publishing team get together and agree, in this plague year 2024, that the most disgusting thing to add to The Twits is ... a visible disability. Scrap this now
@PuffinBooks
and do so much better.
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If you're not disabled and you read or watch a story in which a disabled person dies, and find yourself thinking 'wow, that's moving' (as the text probably wants you to) I'd love you to think about it again. We are not disposable.
#NotYourEpiphany
.
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It matters because in Canada MAiD has already become a way of avoiding giving adequate care and accommodation to disabled people in favour of killing them, and Scotland is thinking about following suit. These are not hypotheticals.
#DisabilityRights
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some personal news ...
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@FionasWriting
I'm with you. I lost the first half of my 30s to getting iller and iller and not being able to enjoy much pre-diagnosis. Now I'm losing the 1st half of my 40s to people not caring to make environments I can safely spend times with them in, so I don't get iller and iller again.
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I'd like to see the press reporting how that single-interest group have such a vendetta against 1 person that - amongst other egregious things - they derailed the announcement of a prize created by disabled writers for disabled writers. They don't care about rights or justice.
I hope the journalists who have been so eager to report the unfounded allegations against me will be as keen to report the result of tonight's overwhelming AGM vote. Because otherwise we'll all know that this was never about authors, and entirely about culture wars politics.
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Well, here's the news. We don't want to die. We especially don't want to die just so some nondisabled person can have some great epiphany and then write a book about it. We want to live. We want to thrive. We want to survive. We need these stories instead.
#DisabledOracles
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.
@SceptreBooks
has signed Polly Atkin (
@pollyrowena
)'s meditation on chronic illness - the award-winning poet investigates living better with illness and how it affects our relationship with nature in Some of Us Just Fall
(£)
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It struck me earlier that these narratives are probably one of the reasons nondisabled people have been so shocked by disabled people's continued pleas for
#CovidSafety
and refusal to shut up. You're primed by these narratives for us to say, 'yeah, let me die, it's best for you!'
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Super excited to share the gorgeous cover by
@RafiRomaya
for
#SomeOfUsJustFall
- Out July 6th with
@SceptreBooks
.
#CoverReveal
#NewBook
#Nonfiction
#Memoir
#NatureWriting
#IllnessWriting
#CoverArt
#BookCover
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It matters because when I watch a show, or read a novel, or a poetry collection, which I've been told is powerful & profound, and a disabled character is disposed of for abled gain it reminds me how disposable most of you think disabled people are, that I am.
#DisabilityRights
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This is a good article about how this trope appears in
#TheLastOfUsHBO
, but sadly, it's not the last of the trope. I've been ambushed by it so many times in books the last few years. Enough! No more disability snuff narratives.
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Wow. I've only just seen the harassment
@Soc_of_Authors
is getting for the carefully worded announcement of the ADCI prize. Everyone equating self-ID with lying needs to have a big word with themselves. They're attacking a prize devised by disabled writers for disabled writers.
There’s criticism of the “self identify as disabled” line used here but, what’s the alternative do you think? A register for disabled? A benefits slip as proof? It isn’t to let non-disabled people fake it, it’s to enable disabled people who worry their disability “doesn’t count.”
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@doctor_oxford
@PeteUK7
@LibDemPatrick
@PeterStefanovi2
@JoFroggatt
@ITV
As a patient who has to endanger themselves every time I go for essential healthcare I would 10,000x prefer a masked doctor who understands infection risk and harm prevention than an unmasked one who thinks they're communicating something other than that they don't care enough.
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Why does it matter? Because the narratives we tell about people matter. It excuses real world behaviour. In the past five years, over disabled 550 people have been murdered by their family/caregivers. These narratives help normalise those murders, excuse the murderer.
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OMG. I just got a text from my GP saying I could book my 1st covid vaccine, followed the link, and booked in for tomorrow afternoon! Yikes! Hoping I don't get a bad reaction but relieved the waiting is over.
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It matters because most of the narratives about disabled people I read are by nondisabled people, and involve the disabled person dying so the nondisabled people around them can thrive. It matters because everytime someone writes that, it makes it more acceptable, more normal.
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What's getting me most is the people who think any extension of the LESS THAN TWO MONTHS semi-lockdown - not even full lockdown - we've had in the uk = forever.
"What do you want, lockdown for ever?"
Sir, I believe there are other measurements between 8 weeks and forever.
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Some not just personal news!
The most exciting news!! 🥳🎉 Congrats
@pollyrowena
@likewinterblue
👏👏 📚and best wishes to Elaine. A new chapter for an iconic shop!
Smith and Atkin take over Sam Read Bookshop
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It matters because we're still living through an
#AirbornePandemic
that is disproportionately affecting disabled people, including the disabled creatives that could tell better frigging stories about disability.
#HireDisabledWriters
#HireDisabledCreatives
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My 1st on-the-job till training
@SReadBooks
just now as I took over briefly whilst
@likewinterblue
did his
@BBC_Cumbria
slot. I only forgot to write down 1 of the books bought in that little busy gap as the rain poured down outside. Thanks to customers for your patience!😬🫣
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Owl my dreams have come true!
3 owl babies in the box again, after 2 owlet-less years.
#Owls
#TawnyOwls
#Owlets
#OwlBabies
#TawnyOwl
#OwlsOfInstagram
#BirdsOfLakeland
#CumbriaWildlife
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@MrsRieB
Nobody loves me everybody hates me I'm going down the garden to eat worms. Long thin slimy ones slip down easily, short fat hairy ones stick in the throat & the blood goes ich ich ich! Taught to me by mum not at school because I was always complaining of injustices against me! 😭
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The last few days has really shown
#medtwitter
needs to start listening to
#disabledtwitter
and not just talking over us.
If you're unsure, search 'real 9/10 pain' and read all the stories there, and think about that next time you're sure you can recognise
#realpain
#painscale
[med gaslighting]
“I'm a nurse and trust me, we become experts at unconsciously reinforcing the biases we came in with. Real 9/10 pain must look exactly the way I’ve seen it simulated in media & my education. Real 9/10 pain is exclusively caricaturistic.” /s
[subtweet]
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We made baby potatoes!
This will seem mundane & unexciting to many people reading it, but these are the first potatoes I've ever grown. They began with sprouted shop potatoes & the one patch of half-decent soil we have, dug in in March. Something good we made out of this year.
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Shook by Marcus Sedgwick's death. We'd been in touch about his book on ME & how hard it is to get anyone interested in an illness narrative that's not a recovery narrative. Friends, don't take your health for granted, you don't know how easily it can go x
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The sun is setting on the
#PublicationDay
for
#RecoveringDorothy
. My 1st prose book. Also the 1st book to focus on
#DorothyWordsworth
's later life and illness. It recentres her in her own life story & recognises her as a
#DisabledWriter
.
#DisabilityHistoryMonth
#DW250
#biography
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The irony is, if you listened to us instead, we'd all have more of a chance of thriving. We are the real final girls. Come with us if you want to live.
#DisabledOracles
#TheFutureIsDisabled
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@DrPragyaAgarwal
The only silver lining I've found to the rampant anti-vax nonsense the last few years is that a creep who used to bother people near here believed in vaccine shedding and that it would make him infertile so you could send him running by saying you were vaccinated. Bliss.
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Oh wait, what's that, the US cover for
#SomeOfUsJustFall
?
Out March 2024 with
@unnamedpress
!
#SOUJF
#CoverReveal
#BookNews
#NatureWriting
#Memoir
#IllnessWriting
#TheChronicLife
#DisLit
✨COVER REVEAL✨Coming this March,
@pollyrowena
's SOME OF US JUST FALL: On Nature and Not Getting Better 🌼 Learn more at where it is now available for preorder ☔️ COVER DESIGN BY JAYA NICELY
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@makeupartist524
Just discussing this earlier - so many people who would wear masks readily if they understood properly that covid is airborne. So much bad messaging from so many governments still baffingly telling everyone handwashing is enough.
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We were getting ready for bed last night when I saw someone post from Shetland that the northern lights were visible. Popped into the garden and lo - here too - so instead of going to bed we put shoes on and wandered up the lane. Using a wall as tripod so sorry for wobbles.
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Was more that a bit nervous about my appearance on
@BBCCountryfile
tonight, talking
#DorothyWordsworth
,
#chronicillness
,
#EDS
and sharing a poem about swimming &
#disability
but apparently my hair stole the show, so phew ...
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Over the moon to have
#MuchWithBody
included on the longlist for
@laurelprize
amongst such fab collections.
#Ecopoetry
#NatureWriting
#Poetry
@laurelprize
is delighted to announce its 2022 longlist! There are some outstanding poets on this list!
Ceremony happening Friday 9 Sep
@bbccslfest
, & they'll be a poetry day
@YSPsculpture
on Friday 16 Sep. 🌿
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Here's to all the women & girls you forget to include or laud, to all the outliers, to disabled women & girls, neurodivergent women & girls, to all under threat of violence, for those under attack right now around the world, & especially for Palestine.
#IWD
#CeasefireRightNOW
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9 month contracts were a way to not pay you over the summer and re-employ you in the autumn, avoiding obligation to consider a permanent contract. 10 week contracts cover no holidays, no course prep, no course marking or extensions. Pure Dystopia.
#UCU
#HourlyPaidLecturers
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I've just had a festival that offered me an online reading get back to me to say they've decided to go entirely in-person, but with streaming, so they're no longer asking me to speak at the festival. They're offering another, non-festival option. This is not equality of access.
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3. That some people are more upset I said anything negative about one tv show they like than about the number of disabled people killed by caregivers every year, or the ways disabled people are impacted by the pandemic we're living through is really, really sad.
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Looking forward to the discovery of the law of physics that explains how something can transform from work you are proud of to the worst thing you've ever made as soon as you press a submit button. In other news, I sent off a draft of the new book last night. 🫣
Managed to catch these three snuggled up together before the two elder siblings flew off in opposite directions whilst littlest owlet hid.
#OwletUpdate
#Owlpdate
#Owls
#TawnyOwls
#OwlBabies
#Owlets
#OwlBebes
#BirdsOfLakeland
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The way this country has handled covid is going to be one of the biggest health scandals of the future. We need nondisabled people to care enough to fight this. I'm too tired to, and by the time the rest of you understand the important of fighting it, you'll be too tired too.
The NHS *requires* nursing and other staff who have active symptoms of Covid to come to work and infect their patients. They even made a poster about it 👇
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Suggests signs at all borders of Lake District National Park with our particularly high infections rates on, which will no doubt climb in the next few weeks. Boris has basically just thrown Cumbria under the 555.
great. he just said that you can travel for exercise. that means the lakes will be stuffed...
@lakes_bins
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I got £3.66 from PLR.
This might look pretty awful, but it's actually the first time I've ever had enough loans of my books to have any pay out from PLR, so I'm calling it progress. Yay for libraries. Yay for users of libraries.
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Advance Book Warning 📣:
#SomeOfUsJustFall
- known to her pals, or those for whom 5 words and a subtitle is too many to type, ie. me, as
#SOUJF
- is published by
@SceptreBooks
A MONTH TODAY, July 6th. It's a mix of
#memoir
,
#NatureWriting
and
#Pathography
(
#IllnessWriting
).
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Cover reveal:
@pollyrowena
is inspired by the Lake District & the journals of Dorothy Wordsworth in her 2nd collection 'Much With Body'. Its beauty is both balm & mirror, refracting pain & also soothing it with distraction. Pre-order now .
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I've been working for months on a poetry project the people didn't give me a firm deadline for until this month. I sent the work to them on the deadline this month. Turned out they gave it to someone else and didn't bother telling me. I'm beyond words. This is not okay.
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Really heartening to know a new poem made it to the National Poetry Competition long list
@PoetrySociety
. So often we can feel like we're writing into a void and have no certainty beyond internal calibration whether our work is communicating what we want and need it to.
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😲 well ... this has just cheered up my day! what an extraordinary list to be on. Thanks everyone!
@SarabandBooks
#DW250
#DisLit
#CripLit
#DisabilityHistory
#Romanticism
#DorothyWordsworth
#DisabledWriters
Announcing The Barbellion Prize 2022 Longlist:
(Thread 1/4)
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I for one would encourage everyone to read and write at their own comfortable pace, whatever that may be, whether to read a book a year or write a book every 10, or to write 80,000 in 2 weeks or read 3 books a day. We all have different speeds. None are morally superior.
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Yes of course there's a disability register that proves if a person is 'really' disabled it's called the criptonomicon & once your impairment has lasted for 12 moons your name appears by magic written in the blood of your swift & helpful diagnosing doctor blended with your own.
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"CBT as a modality is based around gaslighting. It’s all about telling a patient that the world is safe, bad feelings are temporary, and that pain (emotional or physical) is a “faulty or unhelpful” distortion of thinking. ... CBT is built to be dismissive and invalidating."
You can read
@alanasaltz
's story here:
"How CBT Harmed Me: The Interview That the New York Times Erased"
#DisabilityTwitter
#ChronicPain
#NEISvoid
#SuckItAbleism
#CBT
#ChronicIllness
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Well this was quite ludicrously extraordinary.
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Bloody hell it's been a long
#PlagueYear
on
#PlagueIsland
.
@AndrewPoetry
I've been getting wound up for weeks by people saying 'but don't worry, that 1-2% of deaths will be people who are already vulnerable.' Thanks, thanks from this chronically ill person with many chronically ill friends.
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@TinyWriterLaura
With gentlest, I don’t know anyone with an amputation who doesn’t have ongoing issues with & because of it. I know that’s not the same as having eg. an energy limiting condition but I think it’s a misstep to assume so called stable impairments don’t cause fluctuating symptoms.
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Who else in the middle of their bookselling afternoon had to leap out of the shop, run across the road, and herd a lamb back into a field? Just me then?
#BookshopLife
#VillageLife
#Grasmere
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I've lived in various houses without
#CentralHeating
in my rental life. The first year I got chilblains, like a victorian urchin, which I now get continually. There's a poem about that winter - 'Kindling' - in my 1st poetry collection - seems a good time to share -
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Congratulations to our neighbour, who has had twins! Mother and bambi(no)s are doing well.
#deer
#roedeer
#babydeer
#socialdeerstancing
#cotenants
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I've just seen some preliminary sketches for the cover of my book
#RecoveringDorothy
about
#DorothyWordsworth
's later life, illness & disability out with
@SarabandBooks
this autumn & I am unspeakably over-excited. Can't wait to see how it comes together.
#DW250
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A see a lot of fans of the show are exercised about this thread. Some reminders that may be helpful:
1. I'm v clear I've not watched it yet. Clue: "I've heard..."
2. It's okay to not want to watch something you heard has content that will harm you & to have thoughts about that.
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Swimming in Grasmere with
@JackieMorrisArt
&
@ange_harker
, with an otter spell recited by Jackie mid-lake (take note
@RobGMacfarlane
...)
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I've updated my pandemic access statement for 2023 conditions - which for me is balancing lack of covid protections with having a new book coming out. I'd love everyone in the arts - peers, colleagues, friends & frenemies - to sign up to a similar pledge.🧵😷
#PlagueYearSeason4
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This is what happens when as a society we confuse hate speech and dehumanisation of minoritised groups with "political statements" as has been happening in the UK. Anything and everything becomes equally "controversial" - fighting for human rights or denying them.
New: See our statement with more information about changes we've made to our Relationship Framework with funded organisations.
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The dream! I can't deny that I had the Wellcome in my mind when I was writing this, and to have my book that deals with medical gaslighting and what it means to live a chronic life as well as we can in that shop in that place in particular feels like a small disabled triumph!
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The last couple of evenings
@likewinterblue
& I have accidentally disturbed an owl hunting. We’ve only caught glimpses of it on the wing. This evening we both got to have a good look at each other.
#owl
#tawnyowl
#birdsoflakeland
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No one should be starving to death in hospital in the UK because a consultant thinks - against all medical evidence - they're faking not being able to eat. As I said when I first heard about Millie's story, it doesn't surprise me it's RLI.
#BringMillieHome
#BelievePatients
URGENT
#BringMillieHome
At the request of Millie's family, we're holding a Twitterstorm at 11am on Tues 9 April to make some major noise.
This MUST TREND. Please get involved then using
#BringMillieHome
AND
#DontLetMEDie
. Share articles. Share the petition. Tag the NHS Trust.
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@PuffinBooks
@gregjames
@itschrissmith
@emilybobdraws
This is not the way. Please, stop, reconsider. This is awful, damaging messaging and also think why none of you noticed, and learn better.
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Just imagine for a moment if London-based publishers had accessible showcases that both writers and booksellers outside London who can’t travel to London for an evening could participate in. Imagine there being tech and precedent for it, then riddle me why you wouldn’t bother.
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4. Nondisabled writers need to be extra responsible about how they use disability in storylines, especially if, as here, it is a justification for killing the character. The writers say Frank had MS or ALS. These are conditions with v different prognoses. Real people have them.
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@VABVOX
@lonelysolipsist
It is worse in the sense that now there are no protective measures at all, tho we know the terrible effects of covid on the body and the brain, and the push is to wilfully infect everyone because of the denialism. The peaks of mortality are lower, but the mass disablement rises.
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Poets! Who wants to come and hang out in
#Grasmere
for a month, write, and get paid for it?
@WordsworthTrust
have 3 month-long
#residency
posts paying a very fair £1750 from dec 2018 - mar 2019. Deadline 5pm, 27 August:
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Home via Edinburgh, in much pain, feeling sorry for myself & opened an envelope that I was sure was going to be a ‘sorry’ & instead ... !So grateful to
@Soc_of_Authors
. Thought I was going to have to finish book without it, but Rathlin Island
#haemochromatosis
roadtrip is on!
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Look what arrived in
#Grasmere
today! The US edition of
#SomeOfUsJustFall
, published by
@unnamedpress
in March. Preorder here!
#Unboxing
#NewBooks
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On the first train of the day to London for hospital tests. Since March 8th I’ve only even been as far as the centre of the village once. Fasting tests, off meds, 5am start = a more than unusually uncomfortable day, but hoping that’s the worst of it.
#TheChronicLife
#EDS
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Huge thanks to
@Waterstones
for including
#SomeOfUsJustFall
in their best books of 2023 (under popular science, no less) and all their support for SOUJF.
#BestOfWaterstones
#ChooseBookshops
#SOUJF
#TheChronicLife
#DisLit
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Self portrait with bumblebee. Hint: this is not an earring!
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It was sucking up so much time & energy for so little pay, I was losing money. I can't afford to teach now. Hourly paid teaching when I 1st did it in 2004 seemed fair, at £38/hr. In 2012 at £38-40/hr it felt increasingly exploitative. In 2022 at £16/hr it is impossible.
#UCU
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