Highly Irregular Newsletter #33 Sep 2025

Joy, swerving, more joy, pottery and my own take on kintsugi and celebrating "flaws"

Listen to me reading this post

Hi everyone,

welcome to autumn if you’re in my part of the globe! I am a creature who likes darker evenings, red leaves, blankets and jumpers, so this is my favourite time of the year. Talking of favourite things and evenings (you know I love a segue), I had such fun running my third Writing Muscle Workout on Zoom on Tues. One of the participants messaged afterwards to say it was “joyous” and another posted that it had helped her re-find “writing with joy”. And an email from one of the participants in our Arvon weeklong course two weeks ago called it a “collective joy”.

All these responses with that word “joy” make me so happy because that’s really my aim, to bring a joyous energy to the writing process. Approaching writing this way, I believe, can help us write what we want to write in the way we want to write it. This doesn’t mean the pieces of writing that emerge are necessarily joyous in content. But I’ve found that the writing on and around dark and painful topics, even if I upset myself while I’m doing it, can also bring a certain joy in the achievement of having gone to those places and expressed what I want to say.

If you’re thinking that, with all the difficulties and challenges in our world, we maybe “shouldn’t” be even talking about anything joyous, well, firstly, you know how I feel about “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts” (See all my Permission Corner posts from every newsletter I’ve ever sent out). And here’s Rebecca Solnit from her book, Hope in the Dark, on why it’s not only allowed but useful in dark times:

“Joy doesn’t betray but sustains activism. And when you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated, and isolated, joy is a fine initial act of insurrection.”

I’m firmly with Rebecca on this. So if you fancy joining me on Zoom to increase your writing joy quotient (wow, yet another segue), I’m running a second workshop this month, on Sun 21st Sept, ‘The Art of the Swerve’, 7-8.30pm UK Time. Slower-paced than the one-hour writing muscle workout, we’re going to explore what swerving and taking tangents might do for your writing, whatever shape you write in - with time for reading and discussing swervy pieces I’ll be bringing along.

As with all my workshops, what you write is just for you, there’s no sharing of work, and you are very welcome to have your camera off if it’s more comfortable. There are concession and pay-what-you-can places available - and if you can’t make it live, all ticket-holders get the link to the recording afterwards. More details and booking here, hope to see you for a little swerving! https://www.tickettailor.com/events/taniahershman/1770141

If you’re in Manchester or the environs, I’d also love to see you at the Manchester Poetry Library on Thurs Sept 25th at 4pm, where I’ll be reading from my new book, ‘It’s Time: A Chronomemoir’, together with two other excellent Guillemot Press writers:

Susie Campbell

, reading from her new debut collection, Wastelands, and Prerana Kumar. I don’t have an event link yet, will send one out when I do. Come and say hello!

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The Palace of Cheering and Celebration

On the subject of even more joy, welcome to a new, and I hope regular, section in this newsletter: The Palace of Cheering and Celebration! This was prompted by an email from

Letty

Butler to let me know that a piece she wrote inspired by June’s Unbox Your Words writing exercise won the Flash500 flash competition for flash fiction of 500 words and under!

Letty said in her email: “It was the prompt about writing joy (which is something I so often neglect to do). I chose the title 'Ten Ways to Say Something You've Never Said Before' but went slightly off-piste, which I know you'd approve of.” She’s right, I do wholeheartedly approve of the swerving. Please join me in a round of applause for Letty! Here’s a taste of her fabulous flash, 'Ways to Say Something You've Never Said Before':

Ways to Say that Thing You’ve Never Said

by Letty Butler

You could give me a cup of overly sweet tea in my favourite mug, the one with the thin rim, which I swear makes the tea taste better; or you could swing round a lamppost like that bloke in the film, and I would laugh when you tried to sing the song because you don’t really know it; or you could leave post-it notes in strange places that describe things you like about me…

Read the whole piece here: https://flash500.com/flash-fiction-1st-place-ways-to-say-that-thing-youve-never-said-by-letty-butler/

Inaugurating this new section of the newsletter seems to me a fine way to also celebrate Unbox Your Words’ 1st birthday: I sent out the first Unbox writing prompt/provocation/exercise last September! If you have any news related to anything written inspired by one of my prompts/provocations/exercises, please do let me know either in the comments or by email/direct message, and we will welcome you to the Palace and celebrate and cheer you next month!

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Permission Corner

I wanted to share a bit more about what one of my Writing Muscle Workout participants said after this recent workshop (and not just to blow my own trumpet). They said:

“Last night was JOYOUS! Thank you!…a shot in the arm in an overly-earnest world (which, as we know, is STIFLING for creativity!) Your workshops are like rocket fuel.”

I can’t stop thinking about what they said about the overly-earnest world being “stifling” for creativity. Have you found this? Does it tie in with what we’ve talked about here before, the increasing number of “how to write” pronouncements online and in workshops, classes and books that involve oh-so-many rules and shoulds and shouldn’ts? Perhaps it also involves part of what I was talking about above, a guilt that we “shouldn’t” be doing things that bring us joy, creative satisfaction, pleasure when the world is burning? Is there anything else you find is stifling you? Please do share with us in the comments - I promise you you won’t be the only one feeling like this!

My aim in life now is to pass on exactly the opposite of “stifling”, the sort of permission which I feel so grateful to have found from others in so many ways. I thought that in this Permission Corner we might take a little swerve (!) away from writing to another area I’ve been giving myself permission in, because I’ve realised that I may not be just a queer writer of odd things but also a queer potter of odd things! I’ve been playing with clay on and off for years, mostly throwing on the wheel, which I find wonderful because it gets me out of my head. If you’re not concentrating on the wheel, you might find your clay flies off or becomes not the shape you intended at all (more on that below).

So, for most of my time pottering (potting?), I’ve made things that look like mugs, bowls, plates, objects that fit into categories and serve clear functions. I’ve been concerned about learning how to do it “well”, to make “better” mugs, bowls, plates, which are neat, smooth, well-constructed. And I had a fixation on working with larger and larger amounts of clay to make bigger and bigger things, as if bigger had to = better. Here are a couple of examples of mine:

In the last six months, though, I’ve been working in two pottery studios which, in their own ways, allowed me to give myself permission to let go of all this and really play. The first pottery studio was full of energy and permission and different types of wheels, clays and glazes that the person running the studio encouraged us to submerge our hands into and feel! The second pottery studio was more regimented, quiet and rule-following, which brought out in me a great need to rebel.

So I started using what might have been seen as “mistakes” the side of a piece collapsing, a hole appearing where a hole wasn’t intended, a section coming off when I took a leather-hard pot off the bat - and turning them into features. I just realised as I was writing that that I am actually embracing the Japanese concept of “kintsugi”. As Terushi Sho explains in a BBC Travel article:

“Adorning broken ceramics with a lacquer mixed with powdered gold is part of a more than 500-year-old Japanese tradition that highlights imperfections rather than hiding them. This not only teaches calm when a cherished piece of pottery breaks; it is a reminder of the beauty of human fragility as well.

In a world that so often prizes youth, perfection and excess, embracing the old and battered may seem strange. But the 15th-Century practice of kintsugi, meaning “to join with gold”, is a reminder to stay optimistic when things fall apart and to celebrate the flaws and missteps of life.”

I like this a lot. I’m not doing it with gold, I’m doing it my own way, my own spin on kintsugi. And what has come along with this new approach for me, I have discovered, is a letting go of a piece having utility, function. I guess this fits in with the idea of glorious “messiness” I was musing on in last month’s post. The first piece I did this with turns out to be one that I really like to hold in my hand, to feel, to look at.

I quickly realised that there was never any problem identifying which were my pots on the shelf of work that had come out of the kiln at this quieter and more regimented pottery studio, they were so different from everyone else’s pots that there was almost no need to write my name on the bottom!

I’ve decided that this will be my aim now, I’m firmly in my Making Clay Things I Like to Hold and Feel period. And yes, it fits very well with my philosophy on life & writing (inseparable, for me): Don’t be boxed in and defined by others; write, make and live the way I want to write, make and live.

It’s made me a little emotional to write that sentence, it’s a big deal for me to actually be doing it, especially in clay. To get to a point, after going on so many pottery workshops and being taught “the right way” (which frankly is different for each teacher), and then to give myself permission to let go of that and find my own way, is no small thing for me. Yes, it sounds rather a lot like writing. And yes, to link this post together, it brings me so much joy! Here are some of my newest Clay Things I Like to Hold and Feel:

If this chimes with you in anything else you do that’s not writing-related, I’d love to hear it. In the meantime, happy writing, reading, potting, pottering and enjoying the change of season,

Tania x

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