Julie Edwards is a teacher of English and Media Studies in secondary and further education. She has previously worked in arts marketing for a variety of producing theatres in North Yorkshire. Her love of photography, film, music, reading, theatre, nature and the outdoors keeps her busy when not teaching and writing. Julie was born in Wirral and brought up, both there, and in North Wales. She studied Media and Communication and Secondary English in Birmingham and Leeds, respectively.  She now lives by the sea in Wirral with her family and their much-loved bearded collie.

A Place of My Own

When sleep takes over this house and breathing  

takes on the comforting rhythm of peace, 

I hear the house awaken with stories of its past 

90 years of tales that still want to talk. 

Sometimes, I am fixed in my own sleep with heavy dreams. 

Strange dreams. 

I see a man behind the wall, I wonder why he sits in a room that doesn’t exist,  

a secret room that I cannot find.  

Still he sits there on his chair; all grey with dark wood. 

Everything was darker then. 

I am there, briefly. 

The rooms are like ice and I can hear the wind from the sea,  

it beats its message against thin glass. 

They were hard, cold days; everything was about to change. 

I can feel it still. 

Some of the glass still remains.  

Its colours are jewels juxtaposed with dark lead. 

He showed me something that exists;  

something I didn’t know. 

The stained glass is all that remains when the sun returns. 

From the Shore

Lithic path is wrapped around ,
As though it could withstand all.
Everything can alter here
Blue skies seem so infinite
Illuminating vistas.
We can’t control this wild sea
Tides are distant -  there somewhere,
Beyond the brief, calm stillness,
Distant waves  majestically
Ebb and flow with epic strength.