ONE YEAR ON – Thursday March 25 at 7.30 on Zoom

A year of lockdowns, tiers, brief respites, losses and resilience – and yet it’s flown, thanks partly to Zoom and the internet in general. We’ve all become more adept at technology, baking, entertaining ourselves and making do, maybe even at realising what’s not essential and can be let go of…

With so many uncertainties about dates, loosening of restrictions etc, it’s good to have a definite date for something as lovely as this… One Year On is definitely going ahead, featuring Rosie Johnston, Alex Josephy, Colin Pink, Jacqueline Saphra and Rob Walton. They will be offering their unique takes on these last weird twelve months in verse and prose (Rosie).

There will be plenty of smiles and some sadness, nostalgia for ‘before’, anger and questions. Expect to hear words that, at some point, we have all said or thought – but crafted in ways unique to these fabulous wordsmiths.

This event is free by invitation. If you wish to be sent a Zoom link, please email me irena@in-words.co.uk or irena.mh50@gmail.com

Here is more information about the authors:

Rosie Johnston‘s four poetry books are published by Lapwing Publications in her native Belfast, most recently Six-Count Jive in 2019, a description in 17-syllable stanzas of the inner landscape of post-traumatic stress disorder. Last December top Irish poetry blogger Billy Mills chose it as one of his top three Irish poetry books of 2020. Rosie’s poems have appeared or featured in the Mary Evans Picture Library’s Poems and Pictures blog, London Grip, Culture NI, FourxFour, The Honest Ulsterman, Ink, Sweat & Tears and Hedgerow. Anthologies include Live Canon’s ‘154 Project: In Response to Shakespeare’s Sonnets’ (2016), Her Other Language published by Arlen House in 2020 and the Northern Irish section of Places of Poetry (OneWorld, 2020). Before being distracted by poetry, Rosie had two novels published, in London and Dublin. For this event she will read the first fiction she has written in over ten years. You can find her and her books online at www.rosiejohnstonwrites.com

Alex Josephy lives in London and Italy. Her collection Naked Since Faversham was published by Pindrop Press in 2020 (http://www.pindroppress.com). Other work includes White Roads, poems set in Italy(Paekakariki Press, 2018, https://www.paekakarikipress.com), and Other Blackbirds (Cinnamon Press, 2016, https://www.cinnamonpress.com). Her poems have won the McLellan and Battered Moons prizes, and have appeared in magazines and anthologies in the UK and Italy. As part of the Poetry School Mixed Borders scheme, she has been poet-in-residence at Rainham Hall, Essex, and in Markham Square, London. Find out more on her website: www.alexjosephy.net Her books can be ordered from the publishers, or for signed copies email Alex on alex@alexjosephy.net.

Colin Pink’s poems and fiction have appeared in a wide range of literary magazines and anthologies. His first book of poems, Acrobats of Sound, was published in 2016 (by Poetry Salzburg Press) and The Ventriloquist Dummy’s Lament, a pamphlet of 21 villanelles, with woodcuts by Daniel Goodwin, was published in 2019 ( by Against the Grain Press). He is having two new collections published this year: Wreck of the Jeanne Gougy another pamphlet published by Paekakariki with woodcut illustrations by Daniel Goodwin and Typicity, his second full-length collection, to be published by Dempsey and Windle in April. You can obtain copies of his books directly from Colin by emailing him on colinpinkconsulting@gmail.com or order them from the publisher’s websites. Visit Colin’s Facebook page to see announcements: https://www.facebook.com/colin.pink.37/

Jacqueline Saphra’s The Kitchen of Lovely Contraptions (flipped eye 2011) was shortlisted for the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. If I Lay on my Back I Saw Nothing but Naked Women (The Emma Press 2014) won the Saboteur Award for Best Collaborative Work. All My Mad Mothers (Nine Arches Press 2017)was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot prize. Two of her sonnet sequences A Bargain with the Light: Poems after Lee Miller (2017) and Veritas: Poems After Artemisia (2020) are published by Hercules Editions. Her third collection, Dad, Remember You Are Dead was published by Nine Arches Press in 2019. She will read from her latest book, One Hundred Lockdown Sonnets, published in February 2021 by Nine Arches Press. She is a founder member of Poets for the Planet, lives in London and teaches at The Poetry School.

Scunthorpe-born Rob Walton lives in Whitley Bay. His poetry has been published by The Emma Press, Strix, The Interpreter’s House, Sidekick Books, Frances Lincoln, Macmillan and others. His works of fiction have been published in the UK, Ireland, USA, Canada and New Zealand. Arachne Press will publish his debut poetry collection, This Poem Here, in March 2021, with a launch the night before our reading! He collated the New Hartley Memorial Pathway text. You can follow him on Twitter: @anicelad.

Events

TUESDAY NOVEMBER 11 at West Greenwich Library – 7 for 7.30

‘Poems of Peace (and War)‘ – with Mick Delap, Malene Engelund, Graham High, Lorraine Mariner, Jocelyn Page, Kelley Swain and Sarah Westcott. With Lucia Foti on harp.

It cannot be at 11am, but 7.30 will do… An evening of poetry to celebrate peace (but it’s almost impossible to do so without poems on war). The poets, all belonging to the Nevada Street Poets group based in Greenwich (and thriving despite various departures for other places – Tasmania being the farthest), have designed a programme that includes their own work and that of poets from the canon.

And I’m delighted to welcome back Lucia Foti, who will play a small selection of music on harp. You may remember her wonderful playing in February this year, to accompany readings by Jacqueline Saphra and Sue Rose.

As always, the event is free and everyone is welcome. Books and pamphlets will be on sale, and there will be plenty of refreshments.

Mick Delap Mick Delap is a long time Greenwich resident. He took up writing poetry along the way, publishing his first collection, River Turning Tidal in 2003, and his second, Opening Time in 2016. Mick has never stopped supporting the reading and the writing of poetry in South East London. He gathered the group of poets still at the heart of the Nevada Street Writers in 2009. They still meet regularly.

Malene Engelund is a poet and translator based in Copenhagen. Her pamphlet The Wild Gods was published in 2016 and her translation of the Danish author Christel Wiinblad’s poetry collection My Little Brother was the PBS Spring 2020 translation choice. Her collection Gather is forthcoming with Corsair.Her work will be read by “members of the cast!”

Lucia Foti is a London-based Italian harpist. Supported by Trinity College London and a Trinity Laban Scholarship, she has recently completed her master’s degree with distinction at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. She is the recipient of prizes in France (2012), Italy (2015) and Britain (2023 and 2024). Lucia freelances with various orchestras and ensembles, performing widely abroad as well as at leading London venues including Kings Place, Cadogan Hall, St John’s Smith Square, St James’s Piccadilly and the Painted Hall in Greenwich.

Graham High has been writing poetry since school days, although his primary career has been as a sculptor and Animatronic Model Designer in the film industry. He has published five poetry collections to date, as well as several chapbooks of poetry and other work. Graham’s other literary involvements have been in editorial and translation work, and as a writer of short stories and movie screenplays (two of which have won awards but, sadly, have not been produced). Through his keen interest in Japanese literature, he became editor of the British Haiku Society Journal, Blithe Spirit, (2005-2008), and to serve as the Society’s president (2011-2014).

Lorraine Mariner lives in Greenwich and works as a librarian at the National Poetry Library, Southbank Centre. She has published two collections with Picador, Furniture (2009) and There Will Be No More Nonsense (2014) and has been shortlisted for the Forward Prize twice, for Best Single Poem and Best First Collection, and for the Seamus Heaney Centre Poetry Prize. Her third collection Little Anchors is due from Picador in Autumn 2026. She has edited several titles for Candlestick Press, including Ten Poems About Friendship (2016) and Ten Poems about Libraries (2024).

Jocelyn Page is a poet from Connecticut, USA, living in London. She teaches English and Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College and the University of London, and is Resident Creative Consultant on the ‘Just Poetry’ project at Greenpeace, CJL. Jocelyn’s publications include You’ve Got to Wait Till the Man You Trust Says Go (argent press, 2016) – winner of the Goldsmiths’ Writer Centre’s inaugural Poetry Pamphlet award, and smithereens (tall-lighthouse press, 2010). She is co-chair of the National Association of Writers in Education.

Kelley Swain is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing (poetry) at the University of Tasmania, with an MSc in Medical Humanities from King’s College London. She is the author of poetry collections Darwin’s Microscope, Atlantic, and Opera di Cera, and a contributor to Guests of Time, an anthology written for the first poetry residency at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. Poems from the 10th anniversary edition of Darwin’s Microscope were adapted to the song cycle, Endless Forms Most Beautiful. Kelley is also a novelist and contributor to art & health essays and criticism in The Lancet, where she has over 100 publications. Her work will be read by “members of the cast!”

Sarah Westcott is a poet, originally from Devon. She has published three pamphlets and two full collections – Slant Light and Bloom (Pavilion Poetry, Liverpool University Press). Her latest pamphlet is Almanac – hand-stitched and published by Coast to Coast to Coast. Sarah is currently researching and writing inter-species poetry as part of a PhD at the University of Birmingham. She has been working with tadpoles, bats and nightingales to co-create poems that explore the interesting spaces where human and more than human intersect.

‘Chaos, Dragon and the Light’ – January 27 at West Greenwich Library, 7 for 7.30

A poignant documentary film by local Director Sal Anderson. It tells the story of Marika, a Hungarian girl who was forced into hiding from the Nazis during WW2, and forced to flee from the Soviets in 1956 during the Hungarian uprising. Settled in London, she was transformed by her creativity.

A free event to remember and honour all the victims of the Holocaust and of persecution, hatred and discrimination everywhere.