WORKING with homeless people on a poetry zine is one of the best projects writer Julie McNeill says she has ever tackled.

“I was reading the poems again last night and I was just in tears,” she told the Sunday National.

The zine has been created by Streetreads in partnership with Push the Boat Out poetry festival – but the story really began around a decade ago when a woman experiencing homelessness was asked if she wanted a sandwich and said she’d rather have a book.

“That was a lightbulb moment,” said Ricky Kerr, manager of Streetreads at the Simon Community Scotland, the country’s leading homelessness charity.

Rachel Cowan, who offered the sandwich, decided she would not only give the woman a book but also try to find a way to give people who are homeless, or at risk of homelessness

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