All the Way Home

April 10, 2019

On April 9 we had the pleasure of hosting (at West Greenwich Library) award-winning Irish poet Jane Clarke reading from All the Way Home, her sequence of twenty-one poems responding to one family’s experience of WW1, hot off the press (Smith Doorstop). And what a treat it was!

The backstory: Gill Stoker of the Mary Evans Picture Library (Blackheath), having received a vast archive of letters, drawings, documents and photographs relating to the Auerbach family from Patricia Aubrey (niece of the ‘protagonists’ of this pamphlet) had asked Jane if she could write something in response to it. Jane was awarded a literary bursary form the Arts Council of Ireland, which allowed her to spend eighteen months researching and writing. We were privileged to hear the result just days after publication and the Dublin launch, and before next week’s Manchester launch. Almost by chance, Jane had met Blake Morrison in Dublin late last year, and he agreed to introduce her works on the night, reading two beautiful poems from her previous book (River, Bloodaxe 2015) and from the one due out later in the year, also from Bloodaxe.

The emotional landscape of war for those at the Front and at home is illustrated by Jane’s sequence and the poignant photographs accompanying it. And ‘landscape’ is the key word here, because as Jane explained, the natural world offered her a way in, becoming a unique facilitator with its gift for metaphor and beauty, the everyday and the extraordinary, for echoing losses and the small joys one can experience even in the midst of a catastrophe.

For a ‘proper’ review, do read The Yorkshire Times

Photographs by Paul Brown (Mary Evans Picture Library)

Blake Morrison introducing Jane Clarke (left), with Patricia Aubrey
Gill Stoker and Patricia Aubrey giving the background to the book project
Jane Clarke introducing her pamphlet, in the background one of the photographs from the Auerbach archive
Jane and captive audience in the beautiful Library rotunda

 

Events

TUESDAY FEBRUARY 4 at West Greenwich Library: ‘A Better Future’ – poetry from Jacqueline Saphra and Sue Rose. Music on harp by Lucia Fusi. An event to remember and honour all victims of hatred and discrimination. 7.30 (please note later starting time). All welcome.

Jacqueline Saphra is a poet, playwright and activist. She is the author of nine plays, five chapbooks and five poetry collections. The Kitchen of Lovely Contraptions (flipped eye 2011) was nominated for the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. If I Lay on my Back I Saw Nothing but Naked Women (The Emma Press 2014), illustrated by Mark Andrew Webber and set to music by Benjamin Tassie won the Saboteur Award for Best Collaborative Work. Jacqueline’s T.S. Eliot Prize-shortlisted collection All My Mad Mothers (2017) and her subsequent one, Dad, Remember You are Dead (2019) were both published by Nine Arches Press. Her newest play, The Noises was shortlisted for a Standing Ovation Award. Jacqueline’s collection, One Hundred Lockdown Sonnets (2021) was followed by Velvel’s Violin in July 2023 (Nine Arches Press), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and BBC Radio 4 Extra Poetry Book of the Month. Her latest project is the libretto for ‘A Kind of Haunting’, an opera by British Jewish composer Michael Zev Gordon, which will be staged at The Barbican in March 2025. Jacqueline is a founder member of Poets for the Planet and has taught in many different settings including The Arvon Foundation, The Poetry School, Oxford University Summer School and the MsT at Cambridge University. 

Sue Rose is a poet and literary translator working in Kent. As a translator, her work spans many genres, including libretti, novels and a series of books about the adventures of France’s answer to Harry Potter, Oksa Pollock. In 2004, she completed an MPhil in Writing with a thesis on the theory and practice of the translation of poetry. As a poet, her work has appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies. In 2008, she won the Canterbury Festival Poet of the Year Competition and in 2009, the International Troubadour Poetry Prize. Sue is the author of three collections from Cinnamon Press – From the Dark Room, The Cost of Keys and Scion. Heart Archives, a chapbook of sonnets paired with her own photos, was published by Hercules Editions in 2014 and Tonewood, poems in response to black and white photos of trees by photographer Lawrence Impey, was published by Eaglesfield Editions in 2019. Her fourth collection, Aleph Bet, a sequence of poems exploring the Hebrew language, accompanied by some of her own photos, will be published later this year by Cinnamon Press. Sue plays tennis at club league level and is also a keen pickleball player, having won several gold and silver medals in international and national competitions in her age group.

TUESDAY MARCH 4 at West Greenwich Library – a special evening on the poetry and life of Geoffrey Grigson (1905-1985) and his contemporaries. With Caroline Grigson, Graham High, Blake Morrison and others.

TUESDAY MARCH 25 at West Greenwich Library – ‘Mica Press launch: new poetry from Rosie Johnston, Michael Vince and Antony Johae.’ With Nayma Chanchoun, Michael Foley and Leslie Bell.

TUESDAY MAY 13 at West Greenwich Library – ‘Maggie and Maggie’. Same name, different voices: poetry from Maggie Butt and Maggie Harris.

TUESDAY JUNE 24 at West Greenwich Library – Poetry with Robin Houghton and friends.