Below, Karen Francis shares how she champions ‘invisible women’ through her writing, including mothers, older women, and disabled women. She also shares insight on the poetry revision process, and details on her Commended and upcoming collections.

You recently published a poetry pamphlet called a mother is a paperclip, tell us more!

a mother is a paperclip won the Hedgehog Press ‘Slim Volume’ 2022 pamphlet competition, and after interminable hold ups, was finally published on Friday 17 May 2024.  This debut is a pivotal moment for me – and if I am to have some literary ‘legacy’, it should start with this as subject matter. Like the legend written through a stick of holiday rock, mother runs in indelible ink through my core, and shapes and defines a key part of me, hence the title.

I have always been intrigued by the ‘many faces’ of motherhood. My own mother was not particularly maternal and seemed very different to the others I saw as a child. My work in education over some thirty years, with children aged three months to seven years old, and their families, also gave opportunity to observe the different forms and impacts of parenting. There is no one way of mothering! Yet, alongside this, I recognise the awesome strength it can require and summon, and the shared understanding it can create. Publication also gives me a soapbox moment – I want to shout LOOK! See what happens when someone becomes a mother, how it feels, what it really means – look at the experience, resolution, and resilience it involves when you work at it!

On a personal level, having been at that abyss of having to consider I may never be able to carry a baby to term was a shocking and revelatory moment. I recognised how it had always been an essential part of my hopes and dreams – I’m an innate carer, nurturer, teacher type. I was only finally able to give birth after much heartbreak and tough times, so really poured myself into it, gave myself to that role. And motherhood for many is all-consuming, and never really eases off. It simply adapts and accommodates to what is needed at the time. It is hard, exhausting, relentless. It can wreck the body you thought would always be yours – often not for the better! It can wring you out like squeezing a wet towel.

But although, for most, motherhood reaps the most enormous pride and satisfaction along the way, too often mothers are almost invisible to others, just an inconsequential part of the background. It can render them part of the group of unheard voices and the poorly valued. I hope readers see the vital importance of motherhood – in a time when society, and our government, fail to – when unerringly signals are sent that women should get back into the workforce, regardless of whether the mother sees that as their priority, and no thought is given to the fact that mothers (and fathers) are ideally trying to raise children to be caring, confident, contributing members of society. So, here is my homage to motherhood – because it is important and should empower women – not reduce them to invisibility. Mothers hold things together!

You were tutored by Helen Ivory on our poetry course, as well as took part in a few in-person workshops. How did this experience contribute towards writing a mother is a paperclip?

I’ve been writing poetry seriously for over twelve years now and am always keen to continue to hone my work. I am so lucky to be based in Norfolk as creativity, especially for writing, is so well supported – particularly in having the National Centre for Writing located here.  Access to good poetry courses, like the online course I undertook with Helen Ivory in 2019 and the numerous in-person poetry workshops I have been able to attend –  Pushing the Boundaries of Poetry with Will Harris and The Pitfalls of Poetry with Jo Bell last year were absolutely brilliant – always kick-start fresh insights and ideas and provide really valuable opportunities to learn more about the crafting of my work. Two of the poems in the collection originated from pieces I began from prompts from Helen’s course.

What would you say is the biggest value in honing your writing through workshops and courses, as opposed to other ways of improving?

Each workshop or course offers a new take or approach to writing – some are a better ‘fit’ than others but always there is a benefit – something new and stimulating you can apply to your work that supplements your own regular poetry network or the hours tied to your own desk alone bleeding words.

What were the benefits of studying a creative writing course online?

Ease of access, straight away – I have limited mobility from an acute autoimmune disease so, even if I am not having a good day physically, I can always participate, and being able to pick up each section in my own time also means it works around all the other elements of my life as well. I like being able to immerse myself in each section, research, and play with ideas before moving on to the next, which modular learning facilitates – and so feel I get real value from it.

What is your best piece of advice for anyone embarking on writing a poetry collection, and what is the best piece of advice you received during any course or workshop?

I think you need to wrap your mind around the fact that when you think you have a collection ‘done and dusted’ you are probably really only just getting started. Collections go through several incarnations before the poems truly tell you what they are about and how they want/need to relate to each other. We think we, as poets, are in charge – but no, somehow the collection gradually begins to assert itself – and it needs lots of time apart from the writer to percolate, so you come back to it more objectively to see what the poems really say rather than what you thought they said.

Best advice – from Julia Webb, an inspiring Nine Arches Poet – ‘now just put it away and rediscover what you actually have in the cold light of another day.’

Are there any places, events, or characteristics of Norwich, as a city of literature, that have been important in your writing and publishing process?

Norfolk oozes creativity – I have lived in various parts of the UK and abroad but nowhere can beat it for the sheer stimulation and nurturing opportunities it provides. We joke in our family that if you were to ‘throw a stone’ anywhere in the county you would either hit a church or a creative of some description! Country, city, water and greenery on our doorstep definitely feed the soul and the inkpot.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have been working with an amazing small group of poets on a Friday morning for the last decade – who inspire and critique each other’s work and they, led by our mentor, Norfolk-based poet Julia Webb, have been a key influence in the development of my work. I’ve also been lucky enough to access extremely high-quality workshops with the UEA and National Centre for Writing.

But throughout my life as an avid reader, the thousands of writers of the books I have devoured over the years have shaped and forged me.  And, of course, I devour poetry collections – reading poetry is pivotal to elevating your own writing, I think.

What’s next for you?

I have a number of projects simmering. I have had several other collections that have been Highly Commended or Commended in competitions during 2021-23 that I continue to work on. They include My father’s daughter: an interesting exploration of a relationship that involves walking that difficult line between love and fear as a child, how you learn to endure, and how it influences life choices; a new collection (currently masquerading under the working title ‘Still You’), which looks at how love changes, accommodates and sometimes rages and realigns through a long-term partnership.

I also have an embryo collection ‘The invisible woman is waving not drowning’, which explores accommodating getting older and adapting to being physically ‘broken’ – which so many of us are learning to deal with in our aging population – as apart from mothers, I also champion older women, frequently invisible, despite being an increasingly large part of the population, who have experience and something to say.  As someone with a chronic autoimmune disease and deterioration of mobility, I am also cognisant that our bodies can increasingly become strangers, and I relate to the dismissal and patronisation that disability can bring.

And on the back burner I’m playing with a range of ideas about how to best present my work based around myths, folk and fairy tales – many of which have a little of the dark side about them. For someone who revels in warmth and sunlight, and is drawn inexorably to the sea, I am surprisingly comfortable slipping into murkier shadows and treading darker waters.

I see poetry as an increasingly relevant form of communication in a turbulent world, particularly in providing a sense of connection, of shared experience, of being understood on some level, to feel less other or alone. So, I look for the everyday irony, humour, and small passions in the domestic, the modest – but key – aspects of life. My writing explores our continual evolution – we adapt, transform, reinvent ourselves throughout life – in response to our experiences, life choices, the complexity of relationships, and the impact of place, time, and health.

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Karen Francis is a Norfolk based poet, who lives in a small rural village on the Broads. a mother is a paperclip, winner of Hedgehog Poetry Press’ A slim volume (4) competition in 2022, is her debut poetry collection, published by Hedgehog Poetry Press in 2024. Her collection My Father’s Daughter was also Highly Commended for Hedgehog Poetry Press’s White Label, 2021, and At the still point of the turning world, Commended for their Baker’s Dozen, 2022. Karen’s poem Words can’t be unsaid was published by Home Stage for National Poetry Day, 2021.

Karen is a member of a group of poets who have worked for ten years with the Norwich poet, Julia Webb. She is the founder and mentor of a nurturing group of creative writers in her local community, within which the group runs and organises local writing workshops. She has returned to writing after a chronic auto-immune disease necessitated early retirement from the Education sector and has been honing her craft ever since.

Find out more on her website!