WRITING COERCIVE CONTROL with guest, poet Kim Moore

In the fifth episode of this important and groundbreaking live-recorded, interactive podcast series on writing about coercive control, host Abigail Tarttelin will interview award-winning poet Kim Moore, author of collections ALL THE MEN I NEVER MARRIED and THE ART OF FALLING amongst others, to discuss writing poetry around the topic of coercive control.

Kim Moore’s pamphlet If We Could Speak Like Wolves was a winner in the 2011 Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition. Her first collection The Art of Falling(Seren 2015), which includes a quietly devastating sequence following a woman embroiled in a relationship marked by coercion and violence, won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. Her second collection All The Men I Never Married (Seren, 2021), in which 48 numbered poems take us through a gallery of exes and significant others where we encounter rage, pain, guilt, and love, won the 2022 Forward Prize for Best Collection. Her first non-fiction book What The Trumpet Taught Me was published by Smith/Doorstop in May 2022. She is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.

A hybrid book of lyric essays and poetry Are You Judging Me Yet? Poetry and Everyday Sexism was published by Seren in March 2023. Essays tackle subjects that range from heckling at poetry readings, problems with the male gaze and explorations of what the female gaze might look like in poetry and discussions about complicity, guilt and objectification, the slipperiness of the word sexism and whether poetry can be part of transformational change.

Writing Coercive Control, a live talk and podcast series, will expand our understanding of coercive control by exploring its use in cultural narratives and by states, parents, industries, and intimate partners. Six authors will discuss their works, the unique challenges of writing about this topic, and how our stories can present a way to resist this endemic form of abuse.

This is the fifth episode in this six-part talk series. In Episode One, Sahar Delijani discusses representations of state control in Iran in her work-in-progress novel THE LUMINOUS BLUE. In Episode Two, author Rowan Hisayo Buchanan talks about writing about parental control in her third novel, THE SLEEPWATCHER. In episode three, Winnie M Li discusses #metoo and control in the workplace and entertainment industry in her thriller COMPLICIT. In episode four, Chimene Suleyman talks about her memoir THE CHAIN which focuses on an ex who used coercive control to abuse his female partners, many of whom connected after their ordeals. All episodes are available online on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Our July 15th live event with debut novelist Carla Jenkins is now open for (free!) bookings and will also be published shortly afterwards as a podcast.

This event is hosted by Abigail Tarttelin and Clear Lines Festival with festival co-founder, the author and activist Winnie M Li, and supported by funding from Arts Council England's National Lottery Project Grants scheme.

Abigail is an award-winning British-Irish author of the novels FLICK, GOLDEN BOY, and DEAD GIRLS, and 2024 recipient of Arts Council England-funding to write her fourth novel and provide insight into the writing process via her Substack and Instagram. She writes novels and for screen with an adaptation of GOLDEN BOY in the works at BBC Film.

Clear Lines started as the UK’s first-ever festival dedicated to addressing sexual assault and consent through the arts and discussion. Founded and crowdfunded by volunteers in 2015, it was a truly special grassroots success -- and is still going. Clear Lines was born out of the need to create an open, honest, and inclusive conversation around these experiences, to replace the shame and silence with insight, understanding, and community. Since our two multi-day festivals in 2015 and 2017, we now hold a series of events online, in London, and further afield, often partnering with organisations to create a survivor-centered, arts-inspired dialogue around sexual violence and abuse. Clear Lines is proud to co-present this important podcast series.

Clear Lines offers a FREE creative writing resource for survivors of sexual abuse and violence, which you can download here: https://clearlines.org.uk/our-free-creative-writing-guide-for-survivors-available-here/

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