POLLY ATKIN

Polly Atkin lives in Cumbria. Her first pamphlet bone song (Aussteiger, 2008) was shortlisted for the 2009 Michael Marks Pamphlet Award; and her second, Shadow Dispatches (Seren, 2013), won the Mslexia Pamphlet Prize in 2012. Her first full poetry collection Basic Nest Architecture (Seren, 2017) was recently followed by a third pamphlet, With Invisible Rain (New Walk Press, 2018). She has taught English and Creative Writing at Queen Mary University of London, Lancaster University, and the Universities of Strathclyde and Cumbria. She is currently a Penguin Random House WriteNow mentee, for a non-fiction book reflecting on place, belonging and chronic illness. An extract from this, ‘Swimming against the Nature Cure’, focused on outdoor swimming and disability, was published in March 2020 in Ache magazine. With Kate Davis and Anita Sethi she co-founded the Open Mountain initiative at Kendal Mountain Festival, which seeks to centre voices that are currently at the margins of outdoor, mountain and nature writing. ‘Commonality’ for PLACE 2020 is a lyric essay that reflects on short walks taken during and before lockdown around common land between the vales of Grasmere and Rydal in the English Lake District. It explores some of the histories of the common, and the author’s own relationship with it over the years, refracted through the lens of lockdown, discussing the implications of having your movement limited, whether by pandemic or by chronic illness.