Martha Pollard
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slantinglight.bsky.social
Martha Pollard
@slantinglight.bsky.social
95 followers 75 following 45 posts
Liberty Listening | Counsellor, trainer, researcher, mindfulness teacher| Dementia & caring |We all need compassion & freedom to be
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slantinglight.bsky.social
A welcome chance to have studying time in one of my favourite libraries today. Buzz of Edinburgh festival just outside, ordered loveliness of books inside. What are some of your favourite go-to spaces? #NewCollege #UniversityofEdinburgh
Head and shoulders photo of middle-aged woman with chin-length light hair, pale freckled skin, slightly smiling. There are bookshelves behind her and stained glass windows visible beside her desk.
August 15, 2025 at 2:28 PM
slantinglight.bsky.social
Marseille view as the heat begins to ease #france #marseille #midsummer #sunset
June 23, 2025 at 8:26 PM
slantinglight.bsky.social
What a privilege it has been to learn from the insights of family carers & care staff in my research on freedom. Join us to reflect together on ways to connect to strengthen common humanity & community solidarity to benefit everyone.

Tickets are free and I've put the seminar link in the comments 😊
An image of a poster for an onlinevents seminar is shown. The title is on the left, in white writing on a blue background, which reads 'Common Humanity & Community Solidarity: Freedom & Caring Research Insights.' There is a yellow banner at the bottom left that says 'Fri, 25 Jul 2025, 17.00-18.00 BST. In the middle, there is the Therapy and Social Change logo, which is a circle of interlinking hands of many skin colours. On the right is a photo of the seminar speaker. She has blonde shoulder length hair and pale skin, and she is wearing glasses and smiling. The collar of her green sweater can be seen in the photo too. The caption underneath the photo, printed in black on a yellow background, reads 'TaSC Seminar with Martha Pollard.'
May 17, 2025 at 10:49 AM
slantinglight.bsky.social
An Edinburgh Waverley day today #trains #meetings #Scotland #scenery
May 12, 2025 at 3:05 PM
slantinglight.bsky.social
April 25, 2025 at 8:31 AM
slantinglight.bsky.social
Such a life-giving anthology (thank you, Deborah Alma)
I especially love this poem, 'The Word,' by Tony Hoagland, which re-connects me with myself. What are your own ways of connecting with what is life-giving and full of meaning for you?

#poetry #meaning #words #feeling
This image is the text of the poem 'The Word', by Tony Hoagland. Down near the bottom of the crossed-out list of things you have to do today, between “green thread” and “broccoli” you find that you have penciled “sunlight.” Resting on the page, the word is as beautiful, it touches you as if you had a friend and sunlight were a present he had sent you from some place distant as this morning—to cheer you up, and to remind you that, among your duties, pleasure is a thing, that also needs accomplishing Do you remember? that time and light are kinds of love, and love is no less practical than a coffee grinder or a safe spare tire? Tomorrow you may be utterly without a clue but today you get a telegram, from the heart in exile proclaiming that the kingdom still exists, the king and queen alive, still speaking to their children, —to any one among them who can find the time, to sit out in the sun and listen. This image is of the front cover of the book 'The Emergency Poet: An Anti-Stress Poetry Anthology', edited by Deborah Alma. The cover is a drawing, with two purple clouds at the top, and a white circle in the middle of the cover that contains the title of the book. At the bottom of the cover is a blue road surrounded by blue and purple curly waves, leading the eye to the horizon that intersects with the white circle in the middle.
April 23, 2025 at 5:57 PM
slantinglight.bsky.social
The tenderness of this always sticks with me too. I wrote a poem inspired by it:
Image of the text of a poem called 'Supposing' by Martha Pollard Supposing Supposing him to be the gardener Supposing him to be the tailor Supposing him to be the cleaner Supposing him to be the neighbour Supposing him to be the waiter Supposing him to be the nurse Supposing him to be the patient Supposing him to be the clerk Supposing him to be the gardener, she said, as she wept, 'Sir, tell me'... then she recognised him as he called to her: 'Mary,' he said, 'Mary.'
April 20, 2025 at 6:22 PM
slantinglight.bsky.social
Ah the wonder of dictionaries...! I wrote this 'Mesostic Dictionary' several years ago
The image is a poem called 'Mesostic Dictionary'. Each word is one line, and the words are aligned such that the letters 'dictionary' are spelled out down the page. Indented Indications Reaching Letter Leafing Concentrated Manna Eating Printed Layers
April 18, 2025 at 12:56 PM
slantinglight.bsky.social
Accidental camouflage

#spring #walking #air
April 17, 2025 at 8:42 PM
slantinglight.bsky.social
Sharing the joy #gift #beauty #gratitude
A bouquet of red roses in a vase on a windowsill with sunlight catching the roses
March 20, 2025 at 2:08 PM
slantinglight.bsky.social
Love this from Jan Richardson 💔❤️🧡💛💚🩵💙💜 www.janrichardson.com
An image of Jan Richardson's poem: BLESSING FOR THE BROKENHEARTED “There is no remedy for love but to love more.” —Henry David Thoreau Let us agree for now that we will not say the breaking makes us stronger or that it is better to have this pain than to have done without this love. Let us promise we will not tell ourselves time will heal the wound, when every day our waking opens it anew. Perhaps for now it can be enough to simply marvel at the mystery of how a heart so broken can go on beating, as if it were made for precisely this— as if it knows the only cure for love is more of it, as if it sees the heart’s sole remedy for breaking is to love still, as if it trusts that its own persistent pulse is the rhythm of a blessing we cannot begin to fathom but will save us nonetheless. —Jan Richardson from The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief janrichardson.com
February 14, 2025 at 7:25 PM