Amy WilcocksonComments Off on Stephen Copley Research Awards 2025 (Round One): Awardees Announced
The BARS Executive Committee established the Stephen Copley bursary scheme in order to support postgraduate and early-career research within the UK. The bursaries primarily fund expenses incurred through travel to libraries and archives necessary for the applicant’s research, alongside other research-focused costs, such as (but not limited to) photocopying, scanning, and childcare. Please do join us in congratulating the very worthy winners and their projects:
Charlotte Goodge (York) – ‘“Deformity” and the Labouring Ranks in Women’s Travel Writing, c.1770—1830’
Sam Hirst (Liverpool) –‘Curating Legacies at Newstead: Thomas Wildman’s Impact on Byron’s Legacy’
Flora Lisica (Northeastern University London) – ‘Tragedy and Late Romanticism’
Zooey Ziller (Cambridge) – ‘Ontological Multiplicity and the Phenomenological Aesthetics of Desire, Mourning, and Melancholia’
Once they have completed their research projects, each winner will write a brief report. These reports will be published on the BARS Blog and circulated through our social media. For more information about the bursaries, including reports from past winners, please visit our website: www.bars.ac.uk.
Dr Gerard McKeever Bursaries Officer, BARS 13/6/25
Amy WilcocksonComments Off on Programme: BARS Digital Symposium: Expanding Queer Romanticisms
25th July 2025, 3pm – 6.15pm BST
About the Symposium
This symposium brings together scholars working on all aspects of queer Romanticism, from the theoretical to the historical, and generate a discussion on the future of the field. By taking a broad approach to definitions of queerness, we will discuss Romanticism in relation to liminality, non-normative genders and transgressive sexualities. With papers discussing everything from atoms, plants and snakes to Romantic theatre, women’s Gothic and challenges to settler-colonialism, this event provides a focal point for work on queer Romanticism that is often hidden within other fields.
The symposium is open to all BARS members – a Zoom link will be circulated to the membership ahead of the event. If you would like to attend, you can join BARS here.
Programme
All times given are in BST (UTC+1:00)
15:00 – 15:10: Welcome and Opening Remarks
15:10 – 16:30: Panel 1: Deviations
Chair: Matthew Sangster
James Metcalf – Queering the Clinamen: Ann Yearsley’s Atoms and the Poetics of the Possible
Rebekah Musk – ‘A Flower’s Life’: Rethinking Queer Temporalities in Letitia Elizabeth Landon’s ‘A History of the Lyre’
Matteo Schiavone – ‘She Weepeth On Eternally’: Reading Letitia Elizabeth Landon’s Abandoned Women as Queer Characters
Greta Colombani – Queering the Snake Woman: Non-Normative Identities and Desires in John Keats’s ‘Lamia’ and Letitia Elizabeth Landon’s ‘The Fairy of the Fountains’
16:30 – 17:00: Break
17:00 – 18:00 Panel 2: Gender and Bodies
Chair: Rebekah Musk
Kate Singer – Female Sailors & Transatlantic Angst
Jolene Zigarovich – Queer Theory: Questioning the Binary
Alexandra E. LaGrand – ‘The beautiful, the elegant, the lively, Rosalind’: Eulogizing the Extraordinary Miss Walstein
18:00 – 18:15: Discussion on Expanding Queer Romanticisms and Closing Remarks
Amy WilcocksonComments Off on BARS Membership Fee Increase on July 1st: Notification and Explanation
Dear BARS,
As we announced at the General Meeting in Glasgow and when we circulated the members’ survey earlier this year, BARS is currently in a position where it needs to increase its fees, which haven’t risen since 2011. In the past few years, we have expanded the range of fellowships and funding we offer substantially, spending down a surplus that had built up, but we are now at a point where we must raise fees to keep the association on a secure financial footing.
To guide us in pursuing a course in line with our members’ wishes, we asked about the level of fee increase we should implement in the members’ survey. The vast majority of respondents (91.5%) were happy with a fee increase that will allow us to sustain BARS’ current level of activities, with those who favoured a larger fee increase outnumbering those who favoured a smaller increase (which would mandate cuts) by three to one.
In line with these results, the BARS Executive has determined that the fees will rise to the following levels as of 1st July 2025:
Waged: £37 (from £25)
Unwaged: £17 (from £10)
The members’ survey also indicated an appetite among some members (23.9%) for an easy means of making a larger yearly contribution to BARS; for these people, we will be setting up a new Sustaining Membership at £57. No one will ever be obliged to pay at this level, but if you’d like to make a larger regular donation to BARS, subscribing at this level will help support additional fellowships and allow BARS to plan activities over a sustained period.
For members who have already paid this year, current subscriptions remain valid until 31st December 2025. Please note that receiving this email does not necessarily mean that your membership is up to date. If you haven’t yet paid your subscription for the calendar year 2025, you have until 30th June to do so at the current rates (this may be especially relevant for postgraduate and early career members attending Romantic (Un)Conciousness). After that point, we will change the How to Join page to charge the new rates and will adjust all existing PayPal subscriptions.
If you have an ongoing subscription, you will be automatically notified when this is amended. If you’re happy to continue as a member at the new rate, you don’t need to do anything further, but you can also cancel your subscription if you wish. If you’d like to change the rate at which you subscribe (either because your circumstances have changed or because you’d like to subscribe at the new Sustaining Membership rate), you can cancel your subscription and then rejoin BARS using the links on the page. For honorary members, there is no need to contact us individually.
We realise that raising fees at a time of considerable uncertainty is far from ideal, and we wouldn’t be doing so if there were other options. However, membership fees comprise the entirety of BARS’ regular income, supporting the association’s full range of activities, from conferences to fellowships and from The BARS Review to the Digital Events programme. Without this increase, we would need to cut back drastically. With this increase, BARS can continue to flourish; we are confident that we will not need to increase fees again in the short term, and do not plan to review them again until 2029.
Many thanks for your continuing support, and best wishes,
Mary Fairclough (Treasurer), Yimon Lo (Membership Secretary) and Matthew Sangster (President), for the BARS Executive
Adam NeikirkComments Off on Call for Contributions: Literature, Multilingualism, and the Four Nations, 1800-1900
We are inviting proposals for contributions to an edited book, provisionally titled Literature, Multilingualism, and the Four Nations, 1800-1900, which builds on the work that we started during the AHRC-funded research network ‘Victorian Literary Languages’. The network hosted three workshops in 2022 and 2023 and is the basis for a special issue of 19 on ‘Nineteenth-Century Literary Languages’ (available here!)
The proposed volume aims to examine the intersection between literary culture and multilingualism from a distinctive four nations perspective. We hope that it will shed new light on the ways in which literature reflected and shaped the relationship between Britain’s indigenous languages; late modern English and its many variants, accents, and dialects; and the foreign languages that were spoken and heard, written and read, and taught and learnt in England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.
We are inviting proposals for essays of approximately 9,000 words by scholars at any stage in their career and are keen to provide a platform for new and emerging critical voices.
Please see below for further details on the topics and approaches we are specifically looking to include. If your research is not captured by the suggested topics but would contribute to the broader aims we identify, please do not hesitate to get in touch!We also welcome informal inquiries about possible contributions.
To express your interest in contributing an essay, please send your proposal of approximately 400 words to viclitlang@gmail.com by 31 July. We anticipate that full chapters will be due toward the end of summer 2026.
Please share this email with anyone in your networks, including graduate students, who may be interested.
We are looking for essays that address how nineteenth-century literature in English (and any of its variants), Irish, Gaelic, Scots, or Welsh participated in the linguistic construction of national identity, with emphasis on the relationship between the four constituent nations and ‘Britishness’.
Possible topics include, but are by no means limited to:
the terminology of national identity, and the relationship – and slippages – between such terms as e.g. England/English, Scottish/Scotland, Welsh/Wales, Ireland/Irish and Britain/British
literary resistance to, or compliance with, British unionism
literary manifestations of ‘tributary patriotism’
literary representations of and reflections on Welsh-English, Gaelic-English, Irish-English bilingualism
literature’s contributions to the debate about the future of ‘minoritised languages’
literature’s role in defining the relationship between different languages of the four nations
literature’s role in disseminating or resisting the terminology of e.g. ‘West Britain’ and ‘North Britain’
literature’s role in representing and reflecting on the relationship between regions, nations, and union
Global Circulation
We are looking for essays that address how literature in literature in English (and any of its variants), Irish, Gaelic, Scots, or Welsh effects or reflects the translocal mobility of the four nations’ languages across the globe, especially – though not exclusively – in imperial and colonial contexts.
Possible approaches include, but are by no means limited to:
the global circulation and reception of four-nations writing in Welsh, Irish, Gaelic, Scots, or regional Englishes
literary representations of the presence and significance of four nations languages in colonial spaces
literature, including periodicals, in Welsh, Irish, Gaelic, Scots, or English dialect writing published outside the four nations
literary embodiments or representation of distinctive colonial variants of four nations’ languages
literature as a means of making linguistic community portable
the imposition of four nations languages on indigenous populations and/or the relationship between four nations languages and indigenous languages
Adam NeikirkComments Off on NCSA Announcement: Submissions Open for Emerging Scholars Award, Article Prize, and BIPOC Scholars Prize
Award Submission Deadline July 1, 2025 Submissions to the Emerging Scholars Award, the Article Prize, and the BIPOC Scholars Award are due July 1, 2025. Winners will each receive a cash award of $500 to be presented at the Annual NCSA Conference in 2026. Short descriptions are below, but please refer to the links to the NCSA website for complete information and lists of recent award recipients.https://ncsaweb.net/grants-funding-awards-prizes/
The work of emerging scholars represents the promise and long-term future of interdisciplinary scholarship in nineteenth century studies. In recognition of the excellent publications of this constituency of emerging scholars, this award is given for an outstanding article or essay published while the author is within their doctoral studies or within six years following conferral of their doctorate. Articles that appeared in print in a journal or edited collection in 2024 or between January 1, 2025 and June 30, 2025 are eligible for the Emerging Scholars Award, which will be presented at the 2026 NCSA Conference. If the official date of publication does not fall within that span but the work in fact appeared between those dates, then it is eligible. NCSA encourages winners to attend the annual conference and will waive the conference registration fee. Entries can be from any discipline and may focus on any aspect of the long nineteenth century (the French Revolution to World War I), must be published in English or be accompanied by an English translation, and must be by a single author. Submission of essays that are interdisciplinary is especially encouraged. Articles may be submitted by the author or the publisher of a journal, anthology, or volume containing independent essays.
Emerging Scholars Award Contact: Dr.Alexandre Bonafos, Chair of the Emerging Scholars Committee at EmergingScholarsNCSA@gmail.com
The Article Prize
The Article Prize recognizes excellence in scholarly studies from any discipline focusing on any aspect of the long nineteenth century (French Revolution to World War I). Entries must be published in English or be accompanied by an English translation, and submission of essays that are interdisciplinary is especially encouraged. Articles that appeared in print in a journal or edited collection in 2024 or between January 1, 2025 and June 30, 2025 are eligible for the 2026 Article Prize, which will be awarded at the 2026 NCSA conference. If the date of publication does not fall within that span but the work in fact appeared between those dates, then it is eligible. NCSA encourages winners to attend the annual conference and will waive the conference registration fee. Articles may be submitted by the author or the publisher of a journal, anthology, or volume containing independent essays.
The BIPOC Scholars Prize recognizes excellence in scholarly studies from any discipline focusing on any aspect of the long nineteenth century (French Revolution to World War I) completed by a scholar who identifies as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, or a person of color). Entries can be from any discipline, must be published in English or accompanied by an English translation, and submission of essays that are interdisciplinary is especially encouraged. Articles that appeared in print in a journal or edited collection in 2024 or between January 1, 2025 and June 30, 2025 are eligible for the 2026 BIPOC Scholars Prize, which will be presented at the 2026 NCSA Conference. If the listed date of publication does not fall within that span,but the work appeared between those dates, then it is eligible. NCSA encourages winners to attend the annual conference and will waive the conference registration fee. Articles may be submitted by the author or the publisher of a journal, anthology, or volume containing independent essays.
Adam NeikirkComments Off on Call for Papers: the 2025 joint RSAA/David Nichol Seminar conference on “Living/Building”
26-28 November 2025 at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
The 2025 joint RSAA/David Nichol Seminar conference, “Living / Building,” is a chance to think about connections between eighteenth-century and Romantic studies, the ways lives were built and made in the 18th century and Romantic periods, and the way we live and build relationships today. The conference theme draws inspiration from Te Herenga Waka’s Living Pā, the Māori meeting house, research and teaching facility on campus. The pā is a “Living Building,” meaning that it is built to high sustainability and environmental standards, as well as reflecting Māori principles of design, learning, and community.
Call for Papers
The Māori lawyer and intellectual Moana Jackson (Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Porou, Rongomaiwahine) once said:
….for me the notion of home within kaupapa Māori [a Māori-centred approach] is a relational understanding. It depends upon relationships, and if the relationships are strong, if the ties that bind people together are secure, then whatever house they build to be at home in on their whenua [land] will be secure.
Conference participants are invited to bring this relational understanding to a wide array of topics and approaches that characterise scholarship on the eighteenth century and Romanticism in this part of the world. Proposed papers might respond to either or both of the terms “Living / Building” and topics might include:
Building connections between eighteenth-century studies and Romantic studies
Ways of living that were imagined, encouraged, discouraged, or denied in the period and its texts, artworks, and cultural practices
Building relationships in Britain and across the world
Living beings and ecosystems
Building communities, infrastructures, movements, collectives, and enterprises in the eighteenth century and beyond
Life and death, building and destroying, in the long eighteenth century
Papers on other topics related to eighteenth-century and Romantic studies are also very welcome. We particularly welcome papers on pedagogy in these fields.
Abstracts and Bursaries
Please send abstracts of 200 words, with a short bio note, to Nikki Hessell (nikki.hessell@vuw.ac.nz) from 1 May. Decisions will be made as soon as possible, to allow people to apply for funding and make travel plans. The final deadline for abstracts is 1 July 2025.
A small number of AUD$500 travel bursaries are available for postgraduate, early career, and precariously employed presenters. If you would like to be considered for one of the bursaries, please indicate this in your bio note and explain your eligibility.
Adam NeikirkComments Off on Nothing in this World is Hidden Forever: Vindicating the Hidden Figure of Harriet Geddes
by Belén Fernandez Crespo
Harriet Geddes (Hagley 1790-Worcestershire 1868) was the wife of William Collins—painter and Royal Academician—and mother of Wilkie Collins—novelist, playwright, and sensation writer. Harriet’s contribution to her son’s tutoring and education has been widely acknowledged by scholars: she not only encouraged Wilkie’s early reading, but she also supported his theatrical tastes, which prompted his friendship and literary partnership with Dickens; she made her collection of Anne Radcliffe’s Gothic romances available, which may have influenced his sensation novels; and she helped launch her son’s literary career by assisting him in the publication of Memoirs of the Life of William Collins, a successful biographical account edited in 1848 in two volumes by Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans. However, her own talent has been systematically silenced and rendered invisible. Her true story has never been told, for the accepted version—repeated to exhaustion by Willkie Collins’ biographers—presents her as a devoted wife and mother. In this blogpost, I not only intend to vindicate the importance of the hidden figure of Harriet Geddes,1 silenced by patriarchy, but also to give her the recognition and visibility she deserves. Drawing from her unpublished autobiography, I will seek to understand the personality and aspirations of an intelligent, brave woman forced to live in the shadow of her husband and son.
As a talented actress, Harriet dreamt of performing at The Theatre Royal (Bath), and she would have traveled there to request a trial from the manager had she possessed the necessary funds. However, it was the influence of an Evangelical clergyman— a Mr. Marsden as he appears in her fictionalized memoirs—that thwarted Harriet’s theatrical inclinations and her desire to become an actress—one of the few paths that would have allowed her to express herself and live an independent life. Mr. Marsden and his wife “saved” Harriet from the evils of acting, for becoming an actress would have brought about certain ruin. It was demanded of Geddes to waste her potential as a talented performer and instead work as a governess—a socially acceptable occupation for a woman—to support her improvident family, even if she lacked the proper qualifications due to her limited education. When, after having worked for several families and finally managing to feel comfortable as a governess Harriet secured a position in a household where she was well paid and her work was genuinely valued, it was her husband-to-be, William Collins—a strict Evangelical who deemed it unsuitable for women to earn their livelihood—who forced his courageous, determined fiancé Harriet to retreat into dependence, take up the expected role of a married woman, and become invisible. From the domestic sphere, Harriet took different roles as a supporter and patron of her son and as a mailing intermediary between rebel, bohemian Wilkie—who resisted becoming a lawyer to pursue his dream of writing—and his strict, conservative, and religious father. Patriarchy transformed Harriet into a speaker for its discourse when she scolded Henrietta Ward2 for not giving up her work as a painter to devote her life to her children; patriarchy controlled Harriet’s mind so deeply that it inhibited her from expressing3 any deep thoughts or personal asides in her published diaries (Clarke 25), which hinders us from learning about the desires and aspirations of a strong and capable woman.
Six years after the death of her husband, Harriet Geddes produced an unpublished manuscript4 “based on her life as an artist’s wife” 5 (Clarke 78). The manuscript was a fictionalized biographical account of her childhood and youth, and it portrays her rise from poverty to affluence, her struggle to become a valid governess, and her becoming the economic supporter of her parents and younger sisters. Harriet’s manuscript is a bildungsroman that depicts her growth from a thoughtless young girl concerned only with pleasures such as balls and parties, to a perseverant, independent, wage-earning woman.
Harriet sent her manuscript to Collins, seeking advice on how to make it publishable. She meant to express herself, to raise her voice and tell her story in her own words. The manuscript shows Geddes as a talented writer, capable of articulating her insecurities, dilemmas, and unyielding spirit. However, Collins did not find his mother’s work appropriate, so he tried to modify and improve it by instilling his own essence into it. If published, the manuscript would have been ascribed to him, for he mentioned he would sign it himself. Harriet appears to have acquiesced—yet another example of the suppression of a woman’s identity taken for granted by women themselves (Peters 298). Wilkie Collins got down to cutting and rearranging Harriet’s manuscript for some time, but he eventually seems to have abandoned the project6 (Peters 153): no more will be heard of Harriet’s manuscript, which will be assumed to have disappeared (Peters 298). Harriet’s autobiography remained unpublished, unsigned, and unnamed: once again she was thwarted in her inclinations, invisibilized, and silenced. Headed as “April 25th, 1853” (Peters 298), it has been cataloged as by Wilkie Collins. Today, it remains unpublished and is housed at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.
ENDNOTES
I will use Harriet’s maiden name to erase her invisibility and vindicate her as an independent individual: a strong and capable woman who shines with her own light.
Henrietta Ward (1832-1924) was one of Wilkie Collins’ friends. She was a Victorian artist coming from a family of painters. She was known for her portrait paintings and genre scenes.
One piece of evidence that may suggest Harriet’s resentment toward her imposed lifestyle is her long struggle with “nerves,” which led her to convalesce with her parents, visit friends, or take the waters. According to Lycett, (Andrew Lycett, Wilkie Collins: A Life of Sensation, Random House, 2013), there is no indication that Harriet had any creative outlet, and her afflictions were not uncommon among women navigating life in a male-dominated, industrial society (30).
Harriet Collins, MS; cataloged under Wilkie Collins, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, Texas.
Clarke, William Malpas. The Secret Life of Wilkie Collins. Rowman & Littlefield, 1991.
Peters, Catherine.” ’Invite No Dangerous Publicity’: Some Independent Women and Their Effect on Wilkie Collin’s Life and Writing.” Dickens Studies Annual, vol. 20, 1991, pp. 295-312.
Amy WilcocksonComments Off on Exhibition: Austen & Turner: A Country House Encounter
We are writing to let you know about a major new exhibition, Austen & Turner: A Country House Encounter at Harewood House from 2 May to 19 October to celebrate the 250th anniversaries of these two cultural icons.
The exhibition and associated research project is a collaboration between Harewood House Trust and the Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies (CECS) at the University of York and co-curated by Prof Chloe Wigston Smith (Director of CECS), Professor Jennie Batchelor (Head of English, York), Dr Richard Johns (History of Art, York) and Dr Marjorie Coughlan (History of Art, York), with Rebecca Burton (Harewood House Trust Curator and Archivist) and curatorial support from independent curators Jade Foster and Diane Howse.
Austen and Turner are not known to have met, although their lives intersected in tantalising ways. This exhibition brings them into conversation with each other and with a third actor that played such an important part of their lives, their works: the country house and its complex entanglements with the national and global politics, including the extreme violence of the traffic in enslaved people.Highlights of the exhibition include stunning Turner country house portraits, landscapes and interiors and his own watercolour set. Austen’s letters and first editions of her novels are on show alongside part of the manuscript of ‘Sanditon’ on which Austen was working prior to her untimely death in 1817.
We have been fortunate to work with the exhibition’s Writer in Residence, Dr Rommi Smith, and Artist in Residence, Lela Harris, who have been commissioned to produce new work for the exhibition inspired by Austen and Turner and which will also be on display.
The exhibition is open daily from 10:30-4.00. It is FREE to Harewood members and included with day tickets. To book tickets in advance, please use this link.
Please share widely. A digital poster is attached.
Best wishes Jennie Batchelor, Chloe Wigston Smith, Richard Johns and Marjorie Coughlan.
Adam NeikirkComments Off on Romantic Poets in the Wild #11: Dilara Kalkan
Romantic Poets is back and this time, I’m coming to you from the Lake District! Currently I am staying in a cottage in Ambleside as part of my Early Career Fellowship with Wordsworth Grasmere. Couldn’t be more RPW than that!
This week we are featuring two poems by Dilara Kalkan. Dilara is currently pursuing her Master’s degree in English Language and Literature at Atatürk University, where she is in the early stages of her thesis. Her research is centered on the legacy of Romanticism in contemporary literature, with an emphasis on the work of the second-generation Romantics.
She has a special admiration for Mary Shelley, whose influence she explores both academically and creatively. Dilara curates the Instagram page @odetoshelley, a personal project dedicated to Shelley’s life and legacy, where she shares reflections, archival findings, and connections between Romanticism and the modern world.
Dilara has published one paper and completed her undergraduate studies with honors. She is grateful for the opportunities to share her work, including an upcoming presentation at the Feminist Enlightenment Politics / Feministische Aufklärung und Politik conference, and a roundtable she will be hosting on Villa Diodati for the BARS Digital Events series in Autumn 2025.
She is deeply interested in languages, literature, and cultures, and enjoys learning from different perspectives through travel and study. Writing in English as a second language, Dilara finds creative energy in exploring themes such as identity, memory, and storytelling through a Romantic lens.
Dilara Kalkan in a decidedly civilized space
Ode to Shelley: Written in the quiet shadow of my own struggles, this poem is both a whisper of gratitude and a vow of remembrance. Mary Shelley’s courage, her ability to write through ruin, to speak through sorrow became a lantern in my darkest days. In turning to her, I found not only words but a way forward. This ode is my offering to the one who taught me that grief, when held in ink, can become something enduring.
ODE TO SHELLEY
Opened her eyes unto a great Loss,
A strong little Girl she had to emboss,
Bloomed in the Dark and the Light;
She gave her words Life.
O' Mary! The Fairy! This world is so Dreary!
Yet thy pen and bravery light up this path of uncertainty!
Child of two unique parents,
Not a society-pleaser, instead hers is a voice that transcends,
Found her strength at the tip of the pen,
Taught the world at eighteen, Frankenstein's end.
O' Mary! The Fairy! The wind doth carry
My sorrows away, whilst leading me to the day I hope to call happy!
Bringing back the dead ones,
Only possible through writing lines,
I aim to hail the soul of Thee
Whilst hoping the world shall see.
O' Mary! The Fairy! Writing is my clarity!
For this, I owe thee much, for the inspiration
thou hast brought!
Ode to the Nameless Creature: For over two centuries, readers have asked: who is the real monster: Frankenstein or the being he made? But perhaps the question is not who, but where. Perhaps the creature sleeps within us all, buried beneath civility, unreachable yet never truly gone. This ode is addressed to that forgotten voice; the one we deny, the one we fear, the one that, like Mary Shelley’s creation, only ever wanted to be seen.
ODE TO THE NAMELESS CREATURE
Oh, the Nameless Creature!
Where have you gone? Or are you here?
Do you feel alone too?
Like I am so used to.
It's not the looks that make one a Monster
But, still I need an answer!
Why couldn't you listen to your gentle side?
Was it too concealed, a secret to hide?
We all have Monsters in us, they say
If one makes it apparent, will the others stay?
Alas! Life is not a game to play!
It's getting too dark, please led me the way.
Oh, the Nameless Creature!
Is that your shadow that I see?
You don't turn back no matter how hard I scream
Maybe after all, this was a bad dream...
We thank Dilara for sharing her work with BARS and would like to remind you, the reader, to reach out to the BARS Comms Team if you have anything you’d like to submit to our blog (including your poems, other creative/critical writing, and art)! I’m off to explore Grasmere Waterfall Walkways…
