Introducing our Conference Resident Poet

 We have decided this year to invite an esteemed colleague of ours who is a well acclaimed poet.  Their name is Phyl Harris and as well as being a retired academic psychologist and researcher in later years they have taken to poetry as a means of expressing their queer gender identity.  Their poems have appeared in anthologies and highly commended in the Welsh Poetry Competition (2023) and King Lear Prizes Competition (2023). They are working on a collection of poems dedicated to misgendered people who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s.  Phyl Harris (they/he) is non binary and lives in Cardiff.

I’ve known Phyl for many years and they will bring a wonderful poetry/arts dimension to these 3 days of our conference.

In terms of attending the 3 day conference in a general way they will be presenting poems throughout the 3 days. More specifically, they will be part of the opening period of the first day of the psychotherapy conference, and each day before the keynote speech they will be presenting their poetry.  They will also be presenting poetry at the Social Evening and within the Gala Dinner experience on the Saturday evening.  On a final note, they will present their final poems at the Plenary which ends the conference on Sunday afternoon.