Courage Calls to Courage Everywhere

It was standing room only for the talks by Ann Dingsdale and Jane Grant on the birth of the women’s suffrage movement in Greenwich and Blackheath. A fascinating account from Ann of how ‘ordinary’ women (admittedly mostly middle class) living in the area were instrumental in creating the critical mass necessary for a change of such magnitude and the passing of the 1918 Act. Ann, a textile artist as well as historian, displayed her magnificent silk-embroidered hanging featuring all the names of the 1499 women who signed the 1866 petition. Millicent Fawcett, whose statue will be unveiled near Parliament in April, was the main focus of Jane’s talk on the struggle led by Suffragists and Suffragettes that led to the 1928 Act. Anecdotes and slides added to the interest and kept us all spellbound. To top it all, Halstow Community Choir sang three rousing Suffragette songs with audience participation and Claire Eustance of Greenwich University brought in, on their very first outing, some very informative banners “Celebrating women and men’s contribution to gender equality in Royal Greenwich from the 1860’s to the present”. The consensus, after a Q&A session, from both men and women in the audience was that there’s still some way to go to achieve true equality. So, onwards….

Events

TUESDAY MAY 13 at West Greenwich Library, 7.30 (doors open at 7)

‘Maggie & Maggie’. Same name, different voices: poetry from Maggie Brookes-Butt and Maggie Harris.

Maggie Brookes-Butt has been writing all her life, as a journalist, BBC TV producer, creative writing academic and Royal Literary Fund Fellow. Her books include six poetry collections as Maggie Butt and two historical novels as Maggie Brookes. As well as being a writer she is a compulsive reader, hopeful gardener, dreadful cook, besotted grandmother and a Londoner to the bone, though she loves to swim in the sea. Maggie will be reading from Wish, her newly published volume of new and selected poems (Greenwich Exchange, 2025). It gathers poems from Maggie’s six previous collections – about the strength of women, concern for our planet, and hope in the power of love – alongside bitter-sweet new poems about the joys and fears of a grandmother in this troubled, vulnerable and precious world.

Maggie Harris is twice Winner of the Guyana Prize for Literature, Regional Winner of The Commonwealth Short Story Prize and the Wales Poetry Award. She has worked as Creative Writing tutor, Reader Development Worker and International Teaching Fellow and in collaboration with artists across genres since 1990. In 2024 she was awarded an Arts Council grant towards revisiting Guyana and its rainforest. She is published in journals including Poetry Wales, Wasafiri, Magma, and The Caribbean Writer. Her poem ‘Canterbury’ is an Art installation in the city’s Westgate Gardens, and her poem, ‘Lit by Fire’ on the North Foreland Lighthouse, was commissioned by the BBC. She has read her work internationally and collaborations with artists in the US have put her poems to music: her poem, ‘This is Not a Gospel Song’ is on YouTube. In 2024 she was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund. Maggie will be reading from her 11th book, I Sing to the Greenhearts (SEREN, 2025), and from her memoir Kiskadee Girl.

FREE event, all welcome. Refreshments available and books on sale.

TUESDAY JUNE 24 at West Greenwich Library – ‘Telltale Poets: Sarah Barnsley, Robin Houghton and Peter Kenny’

TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 2 at West Greenwich Library – Jude Rosen, Derrick Porter and Jemma Borg

TUESDAY OCTOBER 7 at West Greenwich Library – Fiona Moore, Gale Burns and Lisa Kelly