Short Biographies

Catherine Ayres is a teacher and poet from Alnwick, in North Northumberland. Her poems have appeared in many places, both online and in print. In 2015 she came third in the Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine and in 2016 she won the Elbow Room Prize. Her collection, Amazon, was published in 2016 by Indigo Dreams. She is currently researching for a Creative Writing PhD at Northumbria University, and writing poems about women who lived on Hadrian’s Wall at the time of its occupation. 

Melinda McGarry who has just graduated last year from Newcastle University in Fine Art ( BA hons) has had a previous career and has worked as a press/ campaigner in in the public and  private sector as well as for the Charities Age Concern and Shelter. She has trained  as a mentor for young people and been on the board of a  charity 'Smart play network ", which encourages play for young children. She has post graduate qualifications in journalism, public relations and housing management. Melinda has exhibited in France, Edinburgh and Newcastle. Her work explores the mundane, she is interested in the tombs of the unknown women and in the Abbey as a place of refuge.

Bridget Kennedy has been a practicing visual artist for over 20 years working across sculpture and installation with a BA in Fine Art from Newcastle University and an MA from Glasgow School of Art. She is currently Associate Lecturer in Fine Art at Newcastle University. She would like to investigate the story of Queen Etheldreda and her connection to Hexhamshire and the abbey. Bridget lives in Allenheads.


More of Bridget's work

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Catherine's first blog post Hello! My name is Catherine Ayres and I’m going to be (hopefully) writing poems as part of this project. I say ‘hopefully’ because I’m a slow writer, sometimes excruciatingly so. I could take up a whole blog of my own writing about my slow writing, so I’ll stick to Hexham Abbey for now. I first visited the Abbey a couple of months ago, with Bridget and Melinda, which is shameful because I’m a Northumbrian who’s lived here most of my life. My first impressions were coloured by my main interest, which is the lives of women in history. I’m currently (again, very slowly and in-between working full time as a teacher) researching for a PhD in creative writing, which is centred around writing poems about the women who lived on Hadrian’s Wall at the time of the Roman occupation and how I can make sense of their lived experience, as archaeologists say, by linking their lives with the lives of modern women. Hexham Abbey was built after Etheldreda, Queen of...
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I have upped my duties at the Abbey so I can experience how it operates at different times of day- as the light which floods the Abbey  changes through the day, so the activities of the day vary in tone ; the Abbey doesn’t just run religious services but puts on films! One late afternoon I came in hoping to find my usual solace to only find  John Huston's "The African Queen”, blasting out to  parishioners!     Another lunchtime I was lucky enough to observe these flowers responding to the light.
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