Louisa Adjoa Parker – Writers Bursary Award 8 – 15 July
I completed a short story collection I have been working on for some time, finishing newer stories and pulling it all together. I also chose a provisional title. I also began research for a new poetry collection using my 1980s diaries as inspiration and have been formulating ideas for poems and how best I might use the diaries to turn into creative works whilst being authentic to a teenage voice. Lessons learned include being patient with myself and appreciating that these things take time and that is fine.
I hope to publish my short story collection in due course. The poetry collection is still in the ideas stage and I will develop this further and hope to publish it in due course.
One of poems submitted for the Bursary application in 2016:
Beach Huts on Paignton Beach
Louisa Adjoa Parker
Next to bone-white beach huts
in the half- dark, where red and green lights
hang like beaded necklaces, strung
against the sky, I want to tell the woman
with the little boy who trails behind her,
while she calls out Charlie
every now and then as though the word
will reach him, wrap itself around him
like rope; pull him close, I want to say
I lived here once, I lived here, me.