I’ve known Lynda for many years now as a regular contributor to Central Bylines. Her prose and poetry pieces illuminate a world we hear much about but know very little of the reality. Her diary ‘A Writer’s Life’ has run to 23 episodes so far – a miscellany of topics from travel to women’s health, dementia, cancer and the Lowden Guitars factory. In each one, you can expect more than just the facts of the matter; there’s something deeply human about each of them, exploring emotions and lived experiences. She was also shortlisted for the Bylines Network Sky Hawkins poetry prize 2025.
Lynda’s Gaza poems draw attention to the suffering and genocide
Since the events of October 2023, Lynda has been dedicated to keeping the story of the Gazan people alive and in the public eye. Her first volume of Gaza poems Unbroken The Gaza Poems was published in 2025. Two of them were published by Central Bylines: Winding Sheet shows the victims of war are often the most innocent; Unknown 99 portrays an unnamed baby in a hospital who is alive with “your heart the beating presence of a nation’s grief”.
Now she has brought out the second volume of poetry for Gaza: Speaking To A Blind World The Gaza Poems (2). I’ll leave it to Lynda now and the preface to this collection.
“I did not think that I would still be writing poetry about Gaza today, given that I thought life for the Palestinians could not get any worse and I had already contributed the little I could with a few meagre words written on some pages. I am therefore deeply saddened that in fact, the situation has continued to get worse and the present suffering endures into yet another year with little indication of betterment.
“In the meantime, I carry on writing my poems, and in a modest way using social media to draw attention to the ongoing genocide and injustices being perpetrated in plain sight. Sadly, this has sometimes been at a personal cost that I won’t expand upon here. Suffice to say that I am unashamed of my stance in believing that all human beings, regardless of ethnicity etc, deserve to be treated with decency, respect, and most of all, without abject cruelty. With all the chaos happening in the world at present, and according to some, the so-called ‘ceasefire’ in Gaza labelled a ‘success’, the eyes of the public have again been shuttered and silence dominates the world headlines regarding Gaza’s ongoing misery.
“Winter storms continue their onslaught on displacement camps as rats run freely through what is left of totally inadequate living conditions, and humanitarian aid is still being prevented from entering the country en masse. I am conscious that a weariness has set in regarding the plight of Palestinians, and the fact that other world events have begun to supersede what is still happening in Gaza. In many ways this is understandable given that human nature often dictates our inclination not to be brought down by negativity and pessimism.
“But we must not let Gaza fade from our consciousness even if our voices are small and indistinct at times, for they do matter if only to prove that goodness can still prevail often against all the odds.”
Read her poems and download her books
You can read three of the poems published by Central Bylines: Bait is short but hard-hitting: the visceral horror of war targets innocent civilian victims just trying to stay alive; A child asks (when will my arm grow back?) is a message to a child which gives hope that, despite a tragedy, there is a future; and finally, A bomb basks in a living room compares Belfast during ‘The Troubles’ with present-day Gaza – there’s not much difference for ordinary people. Both books of Lynda’s poems for Gaza are available and downloadable as PDFs on the Live Encounters website: Unbroken: The Gaza Poems and Speaking to a Blind World: The Gaza Poems (2).
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