Bridgette James

Criminology Graduate #writer in National Poetry Library, Gutter, Bristol Noir, shortlisted Bridport Poetry; winner Fiction Fac. Ex Special #Police #Constable

[Bridgette James @BeesPoems]

LOL. I did a virtual interview with @DitheringChaps ahead of my chapbook's release.
Please kindly go read it here: https://t.co/y6k05iYhAo
Introducing Bridgette James
💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎
#writingcommunity #nolimits

[Bridgette James @BeesPoems]

@pamilerinjacob Happy Birthday

[Bridgette James @BeesPoems]

I've got a free slot for a traditionally published chapbook/novel review in the next edition of Penned in Rage Journal. Not to exceed 500 words. Ta #WritingCommmunity #NationalFishAndChipDay
https://t.co/6mmeih01fg

[Bridgette James @BeesPoems]

@AondoanaAbraham Please check your X inbox.

[Bridgette James @BeesPoems]

https://t.co/BBxbpX48wW
I'm still looking for art to feature in Edition 5 of Penned in Rage Journal. I DO NOT PAY artists hundreds of pounds or dollars. So I may not be the publishing outlet for THOSE kinds of submitters. Thank you. #FlowersonFriday #NationalFishAndChipDay

[Bridgette James @BeesPoems]

@il_fera_beau Maybe I didn't qualify for that service?

[Bridgette James @BeesPoems]

I'v entered the 2026 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize. LOL 16 quid ain't cheap though. #thechase

[Bridgette James @BeesPoems]

It's nigh impossible to promote writing by creatives who do not want to compromise their privacy. We are all SHY, but visibility makes you slightly more credible and marketable.I started this project for marginalised African writers who might benefit from being showcased to the rest of the continent.

More and more creatives are sending me their work who DO NOT WANT to be seen, do not have social media profiles, refuse to do videos et cetera. It makes my role harder. I am a busy mum. I have to do twice the work I should do, just to make those writers seem credible and real.
#TwoTierPolicing

[Bridgette James @BeesPoems]

REVIEW by B. James
DREAM COUNT (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 4th Estate, 2025)
COPYRIGHTED

1. Plot
Story follows Nigerian immigrants Chiamaka, Omelogor and Zikora, Guinean migrant: Kadiatou.

Some aspects of Chiamaka’s life are reminiscent of Chimamanda’s one, almost autobiographical.

The protagonists are in their forties when we meet them, but we are told their back stories.

Chimamanda presents neo-feminist perspectives as the narrative unfolds and lets us the readers side with the female protagonists.
Omelogor is used to question p…, and query how women learn about intimacy in the bedr00m.

We finish off with Chiamaka in COVID Lockdown where we started.
The women have numerous relationships.

The cli.max of the story is the second sexual a..bus.e of Kadiatou in a New York Hotel by a white diplomat, where she worked as a maid.
(Based on the true story of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, an IMF Diplomat who assaulted a hotel maid in 2011, in New York.

Chimamanda states she was deeply affected by Nafissatou Diallo’s story, widely reported in the press. She was twice victimised and labelled a sE*x w0rker by racists.)

I cried at this point because beautiful Kadiatou had been taken advantage of before- by her half-Lebanese employer, Francois in Guinea.

The reader’s taken on a rollercoaster ride of emotions.

The woman hit puberty, they go through labour, they describe inter—/course, failed relationships. They date man of different ethnicities and we see how misogyny operates; how romantic relationships disintegrate.

We count their dreams which are mainly unfulfilled. We celebrate their successes.
#loveislandusa

[Bridgette James @BeesPoems]

My son’s autistic. He’s fixated on politics. Yes, politics. He’s now discovered a website where he can watch Prime Minister’s Questions and another one that tracks small boats crossings?? So my son’s upset that apparently last week, over a thousand four hundred people crossed over into the UK? 🤭😮 He said criminal gangs help them. He’s now really upset that that and thinks it should all be stopped. 🤣 #immigrantreality #NigelFarage

[Bridgette James @BeesPoems]

#book 📕 https://t.co/6mmeih01fg
#GranHermanoGeneraciónDorada #WorldCupAnthem

[Bridgette James @BeesPoems]

My favourite 🤩 competition entry this year was ‘Margins.’
A poem like this is a rare find, really. I was banking on it winning 🥇 too, LOL and had Kannie Chawinga’s cover art ready.

In it, Damilola Oyedeji utilises language play to intentionally manipulate words, sounds, and grammatical rules to produce humour, wit, and unusual aesthetic effects. A display of technical skill sees her repurposing the definitions of margin.

In her ‘language-play poem’ she separates the adjective every from the common noun: body, to mean each person’s anatomy. This universal poem is for everyone suffering from a lifelong condition. There is a multiplicity of meanings attributed to the word blue in the poem. It changes in every stanza from stanza 6, onwards.

I like how the poet taps into shared knowledge: we know medics wear navy blue. Is that why the narrator keeps seeing blue?
Blue = excessive
Blue = every voice the poet hears
Blue = everybody is blue
Blue – hands hiding their bodies
Blue = mouths biting others blue
Blue – hurting

Margins demarcate; consequently, some people are excluded from society. Who’s in the pond and who’s out of it? Again, I find myself drifting back to Milne’s razor wire of exile. I am nudged back to Oyedeji’s work with a reminder that the adjective marginalised is cleverly absent.

[Foreword in The Razor Wire of Exile]

#SiguesTúAMLO #books

[Bridgette James @BeesPoems]

*email me

[Bridgette James @BeesPoems]

Ladies and gents, please me for a FREE PDF copy of the winners' anthology: [email protected]

Winning Poem
The Etymology of Homesickness
By Janine Milne
COPYRIGHTED

Once, they knew homesickness
that bloody fist of longing—
could k1ll you.

They diagnosed it as nostalgia
from the Greek words nostos, returning home,
and algos, pain. It had a place in the medical books,

an illness that could bring feverish dreams, palpitations—
imagine it, labelled in ink:
a hypochondria of the heart.

Once, it was a malady of soldiers, rootless
on savage soil, their bodies a Babel,
torn by the razor wire of exile.

Now, this returning-home pain
is no longer listed in the medical texts.
It’s a sigh over a snapshot,

A melancholy for the bodies you once filled,
lovers good as buried—
But not for all of us.

Not for those born feet first from the stars
and flung headfirst into planet Earth,
on an orbit that only moves us further

out. Strangers to their native tongue,
betrayed by inchoate longings,
like an accent no one can place.

I’ve been outside of my life for years.
These are not my people,
though their language is mine,

Like a changeling,
I remain strange to their knowing.
When I say go, I mean don’t leave me.

Where is my cure for this?
Give me my opium, leeches,
my warm, hypnotic powders

to cure me of the look in your eyes
that says I don’t love you anymore—
I do not know you.

Save me from this lonely gyre
a cureless ache that unspools me, endlessly,
from belonging.
#r4today #commission #fuerabaños #GeneraciónDorada #Digwa

[Bridgette James @BeesPoems]

Ghana 🇬🇭 Seeks to Gag Literary Outlets & Publishers 😮
Heterosexual or not, we cannot be lackadaisical about the far-reaching consequences of the new LGBTQ+ regulations in Ghana. If you are a literary outlet, to ignore the draft bill will be FOOLISH.

Thing is, most writers in Africa, don’t read lengthy texts or statutory documents so they are blissfully unaware of the following:

1. Ghana’s new bill if signed into law by their President will criminalise the "promotion," "sponsorship," and publication of LGBTQ+ content. It’ll effectively expose media houses, ALL authors, and journalists to potential fines and prison sentences if they produce, distribute, or broadcast material supportive of LGBTQ+ rights or identities.

2. It means everyone even heterosexual publishers can’t indicate ‘Efua from Accra is queer,’ in the author’s bio as this identity will no longer be recognised legally.

3. We cannot publish poetry, essays or stories by LGBTQ+ Ghanaians advocating for or celebrating their lifestyles.

4. We won’t be able to SEND to or DISTRIBUTE in Ghana, books by openly queer writers.

The Ghana 🇬🇭 Bill is stricter than any law currently in existence in Africa.

Now You Know. ACT. #Worldcup

[Bridgette James @BeesPoems]

Penned in Rage Edition 5 Goes Live June 30th
#writingcommunity

[Sarah Adeyemo @SarahInkspires]

A poem I wrote in a quiet moment called "Salvation" has been published in CỌ́N-SCÌÒ Magazine, Issue 1, Volume 6.
Poem: https://t.co/6aRLGFRjRJ

Happy reading, and thank you for being part of the journey 🥳

Download the issue for free here: https://t.co/p9v6g4HsIx