4 Poets

May 23, 2018

Another thoughtful and varied offering from Cinnamon Press. The voices of Robin Thomas, Neil Elder, Frank Dullaghan and Daphne Gloag were so distinctive and yet a theme emerged through the evening. I bet it wasn’t coincidental – Jan Fortune KNEW… The theme was ‘time’ and ‘love’. You may say that in poetry these are ‘normal’. But the way they were treated and delivered was so different – touching, funny, full of unexpected images which were so perfect that they didn’t feel unexpected but just right.

Unfortunately Daphne couldn’t join us in person but her intimate, moving and original words were beautifully read by Jan.


Frank Dullaghan


Jan Fortune reading Daphne Gloag’s poems


Robin Thomas


Neil Elder

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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