Josephine Lay

Josephine Lay BA/MA is an author living in Brockworth, Gloucestershire, England with her family.

She published in 2017 a slim volume of her first collection of poems entitled ‘Inside Reality’, a selection of poems from 2000-2016, and her first collection of short stories entitled 'Saffron Tones'.

In 2018, the 2nd edition of 'Inside Reality' was published by Black Eyes Publishing UK. This second edition contains an additional four new poems written in 2018. Also in 2018, Black Eyes Publishing UK published a 2nd editions of 'Saffron Tones' in both paperback and kindle.

In 2019 'Black Eyes' published Josephine's second collection of poems, 'Unravelling'.

She also has drafts for several children's picture-books, for which she is looking at illustration options.

In her own words

'The last two years of my life have been totally inspirational. I have been writing for over 20 years but I started focusing on poetry in 2018 after two consecutive accidents and periods of concussion. Unable to concentrate for extreme periods of time, I abandoned writing novels for a time and found an outlet for expression in this more concise form of literature. I have two collections of poetry published by ‘Black Eyes’; ‘Inside Reality’ and ‘Unravelling’

I embrace both page and performance poetry; Anna Saunders, (CEO of the Cheltenham Poetry Festival) a good friend and mentor, says I straddle between the two; a bit ungainly but truthful. I live midway between Gloucester and Cheltenham and enjoy the differing qualities of both places, both cultures.

I thrive on diversity; I love to read page poetry but also, I enjoy listening to performance poets as well. Personally, I don't see a clear-cut boundary between the two arts. I feel it is more like a gradation of different skills; a spectrum ranging from spoken word, to the page poem. This wide range of poetic skill encompasses; flash fiction, prose poetry, confessional poetry on mental health issues and abuse, therapeutic rants, rap, slam poetry/spoken word, performance poets and, of course, the beautifully written words on the page.

Near perfection, for me, is a skilfully created page poem perfectly performed by the poet. Personally, all types of poetic skill can be considered worthy, provided that each creative writer/performer seeks to polish, improve and perfect they're skills as much as possible.

It’s this reason that makes my second passion so rewarding; I love to host events; to run monthly poetry nights, I enjoy seeking out new talent and offering those poets the chance to perform before supportive and appreciative audiences. I run such a monthly event, ‘Squawkers’ at ‘The Sober Parrot’ Cheltenham, on the 3rd Friday of each month. I also enjoy promoting poetry in the community and I am, at present, ‘Poet in Residence at Cheltenham Library. I have worked in Libraries and enjoy connecting with the public especially children. While running workshops I have become heartened and amazed at the levels of talent in many young children.

My third love is helping out as Creative Adviser for ‘Black Eyes Publishing UK’. At Black Eyes we seek to help talented people get their words published at a reasonable cost to themselves. This is especially satisfying when the book we publish is the poet’s first collection.

At the start of 2020 I had the honour of being asked if I would take over the running of the Gloucestershire Poetry Society, by its then, director and founder Z.D. Dicks aka Ziggy The Poet. Naturally, I accepted.

Josephine Lay (February 2020)