In an interview, Hilary Mantel once said, “I like putting my hand out to the dead and seeing who will take it.” I have much the same feeling about, Chosen Sisters, my current poetry project, which focuses on the lives of women from the past who lived in intimate relationship with other women, or wanted to.

In the month I’ve been lucky enough to spend as Writer in Residence at Gladstone’s Library I’ve had time to immerse myself so fully in the lives and stories of these women that I have sometimes felt as if they’ve been following me around like a little gang. Sometimes that feeling has been so strong that writing poems hasn’t felt effortful – more a question of getting out of the way so that these women can speak. Occasionally, that makes me feel a little bit mad.

In my normal working life, which allows just one day a week for writing, poems come slowly, often after several weeks of research. Here, the whole process is very much quicker. That has allowed me to follow wherever the women have led me, and the thirteen poems I have completed while I’ve been here span a period of over a thousand years. It’s refreshing to immerse myself in one era and then move to another, perhaps hundreds of years earlier or later. What’s interesting is when the women across these time periods seem to be speaking to one another.

My bedroom at Gladstone’s Library overlooks the churchyard of St Deiniol’s, and I often wander there, especially at the beginning and end of the day. I love its birds and flowers, but I also think that working on these poems draws me to spending time amongst the dead, and helps me to feel comfortable there. Like the poems in Chosen Sisters, the graves hold together people who lived across many centuries. Some of the stones are so worn that the text can hardly be made out at all, which reminds me of the earliest sources I’m working with, such as church penitentials and records of kirk sessions. I enjoy the playfulness of working with a tiny scrap of evidence, and of attending to silences.

In contrast, by the twentieth century there are plenty of sources to explore, and different poetic approaches are needed. Sometimes it’s harder to write about someone about whom much has already been written, but I enjoyed having the space and time here to research responses to The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall, both after its initial publication in 1928, and throughout the decades afterwards. This led to a poem which uses the metaphor of a well to explore the impact of the book on so many of its readers.

The physicality of graves is really important, too, and I’m becoming increasingly interested in hunting for joint memorials to pairs of women. During my first week here in Wales, I made a pilgrimage to Plas Newydd, home to the Ladies of Llangollen, and also visited their joint grave in the churchyard of St Collen’s. Theirs is a remarkable three-sided memorial, commemorating not only Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, but also their faithful servant, Mary Carryl. From my poetic subjects so far, I have found seven examples of joint graves or memorial plaques. Considering that I had never seen a single joint grave to two women when I began this project a couple of years ago, this is way more than I had expected to find. I’m sure there must be more, so I would be very grateful for any tip-offs. Do leave a comment on this post, or click on the ‘Contact’ tab and send me the details.