Friday Aug 04, 2023

Ep 26 - Dr Polly Atkin - Poet, Writer, and Disability Advocate

What does it feel like to be chronically ill with no hope of improvement? Where does personal resilience end and the system's responsibility begin? How can we support people going through this? These are both the themes of this episode and also of Polly Atkin's new book out now - Some Of Us Just Fall.

Polly Atkin is a poet and nonfiction writer. She grew up in Nottingham then lived in East London for seven years before moving north to Cumbria. Her first poetry collection Basic Nest Architecture (Seren: 2017) is followed by Much With Body (Seren, 2021), a PBS Winter 2021 recommendation and Laurel Prize 2022 longlistee. She has also published three pamphlets: bone song (Aussteiger, 2008), Shadow Dispatches (Seren, 2013) and With Invisible Rain (New Walk: 2018).

Her biography Recovering Dorothy: The Hidden Life of Dorothy Wordsworth (Saraband, 2021), is the first to focus on Dorothy’s later life and illness. Her memoir exploring place, belonging and disability, Some Of Us Just Fall was published by Sceptre in summer 2023.

She has taught English and Creative Writing at QMUL, Lancaster University, and the Universities of Strathclyde and Cumbria. In 2019 she co-founded the Open Mountain initiative at Kendal Mountain Festival, which seeks to recentre voices currently at the margins of outdoor, mountain and nature writing. In 2022 she became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She works as a freelancer from her home in Grasmere, in the English Lake District.

You can find out more about Dr Polly Atkin and her work

Website: https://pollyatkin.com

Instagram: @pollyrowena

Twitter: @pollyrowena

Buy her Book: Some Of Us Just Fall

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Resilience Rising Podcast is hosted by Jen Scotney @jenscotney

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Website: www.jenscotney.com

Twitter: @ResilienceRPod