Joan Johnston was born in Newcastle and lives on Tyneside. For the last twenty-five years she has worked as a writer in hospitals, prisons, day-centres and schools with women's groups, the homeless, and older people in residential care. She teaches creative writing on a freelance basis and in Adult Education. 

 

Joan is a recipient of a Hawthornden Fellowship and her work has been widely published in magazines. She has two previous poetry pamphlets - Breathing In (Flarestack, 1997) and About the Time (with Tom Kelly, Midnag, 1998) and three collections: What You Want (Diamond Twig, 1998), Orange for the Sun (dogeater, 2005), and The Daredevil (Red Squirrel Press, 2011).

 

'Joan Johnston knows what poetry can do. She reveals wonder inherent in the everyday. I like her work very much.' - Kathleen Jamie, on Orange for the Sun

 

View sample poem.

 

 

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