A Writer’s Road: The Work-Work Balance

I spend most of my working hours running the non-profit that I started called Writing Through. I love the work and I think that it is the greatest gift I can give to the world (other than my wonderful children, of course). But I also love writing - poems, novels,...

A Writer’s Road: Missing Cambodia

I have realized that this is the first winter in a decade that I'm not traveling to Cambodia. As I sit in my office looking out at the snow, the cold underlines my sense of loss at not seeing my old friends and students, not seeing the browns and greens of the...

Why Poetry?

Seamus Heaney Amanda Gorman Inauguration Day was an extraordinary day of change and hope in the United States. It was a day filled with emotions, dreams and words......many, many words, and so many of them arrived as poetry. Within minutes of Amanda Gorman’s amazing...

A Writer’s Road: A Poem for the New Year

Happy New Year everyone! A recording of my poem for the new year is just below, but first, in case you didn't see the post I wrote on social media on December 31st, here is my toast to the year finally behind us, and the one just starting: Here’s to A jab in the arm...

A Writer’s Road: What I Read in 2020

What a year. I've documented a lot of it in this blog, but now it's time to write an annual post which has nothing whatsoever to do with the pandemic (ostensibly), namely my list of what I read during the year. The list comes with its usual caveat that poetry volumes,...

A Writer’s Road: Taking Risks

One of the big ideas that we discuss in Writing Through workshops is taking risks: What is a risk? Are there good and bad risks? How do you decide if a risk is good or bad and how do you choose what to do? When choosing, when do you listen to the advice of others, and...

A Writer’s Road: Hermits

photo courtesy of ancient-origins.net Earlier this week, the New York Times ran a story here about modern day hermits. It seems they live among us everywhere. The hermit lifestyle is no longer only limited to monks and ascetics living in caves, growing foot-long...

A Writer’s Road: A Howl Book Launch

There is a network of spoken word readings called Howl which brings writers, audiences and spaces together to create one-off 'pop up' word events. Howl Cambodia has presented a series of these happenings over the years both in Siem Reap and Phnom Penh, many of which...

A Writer’s Road: Art Needs Community

In my last blog post, I wrote about my decision not to write for the theater just now. Given the present incredible financial strain on theaters and playwrights, I do believe that resources need to be channeled towards those voices who might otherwise go unheard, and...

A Writer’s Road: Choosing Not To Write for the Theater

This is a fraught time, especially in the United States. This country is tormented not only by a pandemic which divides us from those we love, but also an upcoming election which has revealed the rift that lays in the heart of the nation. As an artist, and especially...

A Writer’s Road: 200 Days of Recording the Pandemic

Back in July, I wrote a blog post about my first 100 days in the pandemic. My last sentence on that blog was And so it continues. And so it has. I don't think that I expected the pandemic to be all over by now, but I think I felt that my own need to record it so...

A Writer’s Road: Voting and Poetry

image courtesy of npr.org I voted this past week. It has never felt quite so monumental. But voting has always felt like an important event to me, whether I've done it inside an automated booth in a big US city, or a small council hall in the UK. Whether I've pulled a...

A Writer’s Road: Learning to Drum

With the passing of the summer and the prospect of long months full of cold and darkness (not to mention a worrying US election), I decided enough was enough. Enough pessimism. Enough doom and gloom. My apocalyptic view was getting me nowhere and certainly not doing...

A Writer’s Road: A Poem for Ruth

Here I am, needing to write another blog post instigated by death. Last week's passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a huge loss, not only for Americans. not only for women, not only for those who believe in the rule of law, but for everyone, everywhere. When has there...

A Writer’s Road: Overlapping Holidays

So many people think that religions differ greatly, but I'm always amazed at how similar they can be. This week sees the start of two very different, yet very similar holy seasons. Pchum Ben is one of the holiest times of the Cambodian calendar. It is a 15 day...

A Writer’s Road: Time Hurts and Helps, and John Cage

Matthias Bein/picture alliance via Getty Images Whenever I talk to anyone about the pandemic, which I still seem to do all the time, I say that at this point my anxiety level is under control, as long as I don't try to plan anything beyond a week away. Of the many...

A Writer’s Road: The Death of a Khmer Rouge Monster

image courtesy of BBC.co.uk It was reported that Kaing Guk Eav, otherwise known as Duch, died today. He had been the Chief of the notorious Tuol Sleng Prison and had personally overseen the torture and deaths of thousands of Cambodian citizens. It took nearly 50 years...

A Writer’s Road: Bin My Word

Nadia Kingsley And Fair Acre Press have created a fun podcast called The Word Bin. The idea is for people, many of them writers, to choose a word to bin, or throw into the trash. If there was a word which you wanted to get rid of, what would it be and why. Every day...

A Writer’s Road: Writing Again

Back in May, I wrote a post about my inability to write creatively during what was then the middle of the beginning of the pandemic. You can reread it in its entirety here, but here is one conclusion I drew: Writing creatively takes a huge amount of energy and a real...

A Writer’s Road: The National Virtual Medical Orchestra

Surprisingly, I have often found myself, in my musical life, playing classical music with physicians. I've been fascinated by the real connection between music and medicine, and I even tried to dissect that relationship in one of the characters of my novel, Out of the...

A Writer’s Road: Sunset on the Horizon

photo courtesy of www.horizonresearch.org I start my day by looking at my inbox of emails which have come in over night from my Writing Through team in Cambodia. Besides those, there are the inevitable emails from news feeds which I try to put off til later; starting...

A Writer’s Road: Blowing Bubbles

image courtesy of fifa.com Back when I was in college, every Wednesday evening we had "Snacks". This was an event, not just a food. The Resident Advisor organized it for the entire dorm, and everyone would go down to the common room with their mug, fill it up with tea...

A Writer’s Road: Remembering John Lewis

The United States lost a hero and patriot this past week, John Lewis. He wasn't world famous, and outside of the US, his name wasn't a household word. I'm sure that when many of my British readers hear John Lewis, they think of the department store chain, rather than...

A Writer’s Road: 100 Days of Recording the Pandemic

I have been keeping a journal for decades. Historically, I haven't written in them each and every day. Sometimes I've gone a month or more without journaling. But the shelf of black, lined Moleskin books stands as a testimony to how important these occasional...

A Writer’s Road: The Need for Anti-fascism in Education

I thought I was going to write about something else in today's blog post, but then I read this article and knew I wanted to share it along. It is written by the President of Wesleyan University, Michael Roth, and appeared in the recent issue of Inside Higher Ed. The...

A Writer’s Road: The Importance of Tone

Over the past weeks, we have begun to take part in conversations about race which are long overdue. Many of us are having uncomfortable, although necessary, conversations. I can only hope that these conversations will catapult us all into enacting the changes so...

A Writer’s Road: Recalling James Baldwin

photo courtesy of Allan Warren Every generation has a few voices which ring with a special clarity. If you are lucky enough to have access to an education which allows both teachers and students to open themselves to the sounds of those voices, then those words become...

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