Ysella Sims

Writing notes

May 31, 2023May 31, 2023 By ysellasims Writing

‘…capitalism can make you feel that unless you’re producing something brilliant, shiny and saleable, then you’re not an artist.’

Growing notes

May 31, 2023May 31, 2023 By ysellasims Life Writing / Writing

“Gardening, the act of putting my hands into the soil, saves me time and again.”

Newsletter May 2023

May 31, 2023May 31, 2023 By ysellasims Newsletter

A change of direction for truth & dare as I begin to focus on creating rather than producing.

Watershed

April 14, 2023April 14, 2023 By ysellasims Life Writing / Roots & Redsand / Writing

“So my mind is full of what home means, whether it’s a place, a person, or a feeling, when the train pulls into the station and I climb aboard, looking for Dad.”

Hibernation

January 7, 2023April 14, 2023 By ysellasims Life Writing / Writing

“I feel more and more as though I belong to the before times – the 1970s and 80s, the watery technicolour of Crackerjack, disaster movies and flares, of kids under coats in seatbeltless cars, of drunk drivers and questionable personal politics.”

Autumn

October 5, 2022October 5, 2022 By ysellasims Life Writing / Uncategorized / Writing

I begin to find that the observations I have heard my mothers and mothers-in-law make over the years are now my own – I too have had enough of cooking and Christmases.

Birdlife

July 15, 2022July 17, 2022 By ysellasims Life Writing / Writing

“It was brutal, but wasn’t that what nature was, what we were, made brutal by our drive to survive?”

Late Light

June 18, 2022May 30, 2023 By ysellasims Fiction

“Paolo felt for each step like a child in the dark. There was a rattle coming from his insides, like a shaken bag of scrabble letters; clink, clink, clink.”

Telling tales at Crediton Arts Centre this autumn

September 1, 2022January 7, 2023 By ysellasims Life Writing / truthanddare / Uncategorized / Writing

A new course of creative writing workshops at Crediton Arts Centre might be just the help you need to start getting your story on to the page.

Poetry Profile – John McCullough

September 1, 2022January 7, 2023 By ysellasims poetry / Poetry Blog

John McCullough is an award winning poet, writer and teacher. His poems often blend the physical with the surreal, the sublime with the everyday, never

Poems to grow by

March 3, 2022March 8, 2022 By ysellasims Life Writing / poetry / Roots & Redsand / Writing

“We clamoured to be told the stories she had told us a thousand times before”

Tramp

February 10, 2022February 18, 2022 By ysellasims Life Writing / Roots & Redsand / Writing

“Once we’ve parted ways and I’ve set off around the fields, trying not to notice the stakes hammered in around the perimeters of both fields, I feel the jolt of reality. To walk here wouldn’t be possible for much longer – once the fence was up, it was up. It wouldn’t be coming down again. Each fence post suddenly feels like a line drawn in the sand.”