Skinner takes on Pennine walk for Rebecca Swift Foundation

Author Richard Skinner has launched a JustGiving crowdfunding campaign for the Rebecca Swift Foundation ahead of an expedition walking the Pennine Way.

Skinner plans to walk 268 miles of the route, and deposit six poems and artefacts written by the six winners of the Women Poets’ Prize on biodegradable materials. 

He will begin the hike in Edale, in the northern Derbyshire Peak District, walk northwards through the Yorkshire Dales and Northumberland National Park to Kirk Yetholm, just inside the Scottish border.

His crowdfunder comes shortly before the Women Poets’ Prize opens submissions for its third edition on 1st July. The 2022 winners will be announced with a special event on 19th November.

The prize is a biennial award given to three UK-based women poets and consists of a cash prize of £1,000 plus 18 months of creative, professional and pastoral support.

The Rebecca Swift Foundation was set up as a UK registered charity in 2018 in memory of Swift, the founder of The Literary Consultancy (TLC). Swift was a prolific writer and loved poetry. Her biography of Emily Dickinson, Dickinson: Poetic Lives (Hesperus Limited), was published in 2011, and she wrote poetry throughout her life. 

The foundation will follow Skinner’s progress through a social media campaign, and he will document his walk on his blog.

“I first met Bex in the café at the British Library where she ‘interviewed’ me for a role as a reader for TLC,” he said. “This was in 1999 and I had just got my first publishing contract with Faber, for The Red Dancer, my fictional biography of Mata Hari. I launched into a tirade about overhauling traditional biography, as exemplified by writers like Michael Holroyd, when she stopped me in my tracks to let me know that Michael was her stepfather. I nearly blew it, but she gracefully saved my bacon. I went on to read for TLC  for a bit more than 10 years, writing hundreds of reports. It was my only source of income for a long time, so I will always be grateful for the break she gave me.

“Not only that, Bex and I became close friends, travelling together to do various literature events both within the UK and abroad. After I stopped reading for TLC, we used to meet for dinner every few months, meals that were always full of laughter and very frank discussion. Becky was someone I confided in and trusted implicitly and there isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t think about her love of musicals and her terrible jokes.”