Episode 12: Christina Thatcher

Christina Thatcher is an award-winning poet, a creative writing lecturer at Cardiff Metropolitan University, poetry editor of The Cardiff Review, tutor for The Poetry School, and runs Wales’ largest writing group, Roath Writers.

Christina’s debut poetry anthology, ‘More Than You Were’, grapples with the loss of her father from addiction and was written as the creative component of her PHD in Creative Writing from Cardiff University. The critical component deals with writing about death and using writing as liberation from disenfranchised grief. Her most recent anthology, ‘How To Carry Fire’, is in part a follow on from ‘More Than You Were’, but it is clear that Christina felt a cathartic sense of freedom and expansion when writing it. Both were published by Parthian Books.

Christina talks in her interview about moving to Wales from America and about how she started writing poetry from a young age as a form of escapism; she offers sound advice to aspiring poets about finding one’s voice and talks us through how the title of ‘How To Carry Fire’ came into being through retrospection of her family’s trauma; and she explains how poetry helps her make meaning of the world and her place within it. Her words are as inspiring on the page as they are when she babbles with Megan Thomas and if you aren’t rushing out to buy her collections after listening, you’ll be rushing to your notepad to write yourself.