I like things not to be too professional – I like wabi-sabi thinking and being (just as well – broken).

In blogging very fresh poems since April 2018 I was interested in sharing process, and working transparently. The world was only slightly interested and I’ve slowed that to think on how to give the best account of my work in the sea of words.

I began to write poetry during my postgraduate research as a counsellor twenty years ago or so. Since then its become a mainstay for me. Both in reading and in writing. It connects me to my roots and tends to growth and wellness. In that time I also began a more open dialogue about gender. Both may have prevented earlier drift  and mistake in life but couldn’t really be approached, spoken, then, as they needed, sadly – yet both, as for all of us, part of the ground within, there. I’m interested in how we may offer conditions that allow all to thrive in mutual respect, it’s all I can do. I’m a survivor of the mental health system and prefer humanistic approaches to the person.

This site’s title a blind catch in the sun is taken from an as yet unpublished poem and refers to a happy synchronicity in what feels like another lifetime.

You can read about a forthcoming pamphlet of mine here – Lucidities. I was mentored about ten years ago by Survivors’ Poetry which started my experience of publication. My work is also nurtured now by writing for wellbeing principles that allow process so well – check out the work of Lapidus International with whom I volunteer. In a way I was on, as we may all be, my own track with this, it is good to know how much understanding there is of how writing can help is out there.

Occasionally individual posts are relevant, such as this – thinking about being an emerging poet in middle age . Some of my prose says more about myself. 

I assert my copyright as the author of the poems, writing and taker of the photos and all the content I post here  (except where content is otherwise attributed)

Toni Hurford

Contact
You can email me at  tonipoet at ablindcatchinthesun dot com

Links

to some of the sites mentioned here

Disability Arts Online

Lapidus International – the words for wellbeing association

Beaumont Society, trans support