EXAMPLE OF WORK
FOR CEREMONIAL LIVE POETRY
In The Garden
poetry Collection
Created during residency at
Birmingham Women’s and Childrens Hospital.
IN THE GARDEN POEMS - READ HERE
WORKSHOP FACILITATION
EXAMPLES
Workshop plans and guides I’ve created.
This is just a sample.
GROUNDING THROUGH POETRY
Download fileGATES OF GRIEF POETRY WORKSHOP
Download fileTHE LOSS COMPANION POETRY THERAPY GUIDE
Online Viewing
PUBLISHED ARTICLES on therapeutic Poetry
LAPIDUS INTERNATIONAL
WRITING FOR WELLBEING ORGANISATION
The Right Words
This article reflects on the origins and impact of The Right Words, a therapeutic poetry project born from personal loss, exploring how poetry can offer language for grief, create spaces of collective care, and plant the seeds for wider healing practice.
The gifts of Arts Council England lie in their ability to seed work that matters; enabling projects like The Right Words to grow from personal need into collective healing, from a single grief into spaces where language, care, and creativity can meet others in theirs.
READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE
MSLEXIA MAGAZINE
COMMISSIONS
Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood
FROM THE MAC
Hayward Gallery Touring’s major group exhibition Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood will plunge into the joys and heartaches, mess, myths and mishaps of motherhood through over 100 artworks, from the feminist avant-garde to the present day.
Local Birmingham poet Hayley Frances produced a live literature poetry piece of the symposium held at MAC in the context of this major exhibition: Picturing The Unseen - Grief & labour in and out of motherhood.
Her work explores the psychology of creative writing and its use as a therapeutic medium. Administer the Laughing Gas (VERVE Poetry Press) is her debut collection. In 2024 she was appointed the first Poet in Residence for Birmingham Women’s and Children’s Hospital.
The poem takes the form of a Ghazal, an amatory poem or ode originating in Arabic poetry. It acts as an alternative documentation of the event and is available to read below.
READ THE POEM HERE
KIMPTON FITSROY
PANKHURST SUFFRAGETTES COMMISSION
Inspired by the hotel being the site of Suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst’s former home, this year’s residency celebrates how poetry was often used as a vehicle to progress the women’s movement throughout history. Kimpton Fitzroy London’s first creative resident is rising poetry star, Hayley Frances, who has penned a poem titled ‘Fable of the Singing Queens Of England’ which is inspired by the hotel’s history and striking architecture. Hayley has been selected as the first creative in residence as her work explores the psychology of creative writing, similarly to how the Suffragettes would express their struggle while protesting.
READ ABOUT IT HERE
Recording
of book launch
This is an audio recording provided by The Royal Birmingham Conservatoire of the book launch for Administer the Laughing Gas, featured at Birmingham Literature Festival.
The performance was a live grief tending with soundscape, singing bowls, poetry from the collection and story telling.
ADMINISTER THE LAUGHING GAS
VERVE POETRY PRESS 24
"Inventive, vivid, dreamlike yet unflinching and full to burst with startling images and achingly beautiful language. This is a book that invites new ways of seeing grief, loss, trauma, motherhood and the body with candour, vulnerability, personality and hope. An important and compelling work on the complex journey of survival."
- Cecilia Knapp.
"This is how grief becomes a stained glass window: beautiful, reflective, imagistic and somehow holy. Gorgeous and terrifying. Read it."
- Joelle Taylor
Hayley Frances' debut collection Administer the Laughing Gas, VERVE Poetry Press, is an an example of grief in translation. Each poem is an unfiltered documentation of a bereaved mothers survival, presenting ethereal realisations of birth trauma, grief, body autonomy, and ritual.
This collection is the beginning of an awakening that presents the reality of loss through poems that powerfully translate a mother's emotional strife alongside her lived experience.
