HOME – with Susannah Hart, NJ Hynes and Rosie Johnston, and Lucia Foti on harp

Aunts featured large in some of the poems on the theme of ‘home’ read on March 24th at West Greenwich Library. Aunts (and hopefully grandmothers, though not mentioned…) providing refuge, fun and at times wild new perspectives when home life is proving tricky, painful or unexciting.

Where is home, when you move to different ones as a child? And since Earth is our home, who are our neighbours? And when your hometown is Minneapolis and it lives through the horrors of ICE bullying and shooting, what do you do? The yearning for the sea and the ocean, which were such a big part of ‘home’ is transformed into beautiful lines, too.

The poets’ different voices gave us word-perfect glimpses of these, and more, aspects of what ‘home’ meant for them, for the large audience to enjoy, absorb and perhaps even identify with.

Lucia produced magical sounds from the beautiful golden harp, choosing pieces that complemented the readings: an excerpt from Dvorak’s New World Symphony, given the title ‘Going Home’, a beautiful Irish tune, Greensleeves and a virtuosic medley of Neapolitan songs.

An altogether great event. A big thank-you to the Library staff as always, to the poets and Lucia, and of course to everyone who attended.

If you wish to buy any of the poetry books, I’m adding the poets’ biographies here with details of their collections. If you wish to contact Lucia about harp lessons or playing at events, please contact me.

Susannah Hart has been widely published in magazines and online, including Smiths Knoll, Poetry Review, PN Review and Finished Creatures. Her first collection Out of True won the Live Canon First Collection Prize and her poem Reading the Safeguarding and Child Protection Policy won the 2019 National Poetry Competition. Susannah is on the board of Magma Poetry and is also a trustee of Poetry in Aldeburgh, where she coordinates the schools programme. She lives in London with her husband, is a longstanding governor of her local primary school and in her spare time is trying without much success to learn Japanese.

NJ Hynes lived and worked in South London for over 30 years but has recently relocated to East Sussex. Before moving to the UK, she lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a part of the US currently under siege from Trump’s private army, bringing to the front notions of home, allegiance and belonging. Her first collection The Department of Emotional Projections won Live Canon’s inaugural First Collection competition in 2014. Her latest pamphlet Tracking Light, Stacking Time, written in response to the astrophotography exhibited each year at the National Maritime Museum, was published by Live Canon in 2023. In between, she’s published in numerous journals, including Rialto, The Long Poem Magazine, Brittle Star and Under the Radar. Her work has also appeared in the Washington Post as well as at train stations, art galleries and Soho shop fronts. 

Rosie Johnston’s fifth poetry book is Safe Ground, published by Mica Press last year. It traces Rosie’s search for safety from a tricky upbringing in Troubles Belfast to peace and a sense of home where she now lives near Margate. Her four earlier collections were published by Lapwing Publications (Belfast). Rosie’s main themes are home, and nature’s place in our recovery from trauma. Her poetry is anthologised by Live Canon, Arlen House, OneWorld’s Places of Poetry anthology, Fevers of the Mind and American Writers Review. Her poems have appeared in The Phare, Snakeskin, London Grip, Culture NI, The Honest Ulsterman, Mary Evans Picture Library’s Poems and Pictures blog and Fevers of the Mind. Rosie reads her poetry widely, most recently at the Faversham Literary Festival. She runs informal groups for writers in all genres and is currently developing ‘writing buddy’ or ‘quiet writing’ groups several times a month. www.rosiejohnstonwrites.com

Lucia Foti is a London-based Italian harpist. After graduating with first class honours from the Conservatorio di Como, she completed her Master’s, graduating with distinction from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. Lucia has won several national and international prizes, including first prize at the 2012 Concours Français de la Harpe and the 2015 Soroptimist Italia Competition for Young Talents, and more recently, third prize at the 2024 Manchester Harp Competition. She performs solo with professional orchestras, has performed at Kings Place and can be heard regularly at Cadogan Hall and St John’s Smith Square with the Young Musicians’ Symphony Orchestra. Lucia and guitarist Stefano Fiacco have partnered to form the Nazca Duo, and in 2023 they have been awarded the Colin Blythe Bursary Fund in recognition of their achievement in chamber music.

‘Chaos Dragon and the Light’ on Holocaust Memorial Night.

A beautiful, touching and thought provoking film by Sal Anderson, about the extraordinary life trajectory of Marika Henriques, from a little girl in her native Budapest hiding, alone and terrified, from the nazis, to 1956, when the Hungarian uprising against the Soviets unleashed more horrors on Marika, her family and millions of others, to finding refuge in London and slowly recovering her identity, even her name. A fortuitous gift of paper and crayons while in hospital got her started on drawing her dreams in bold colours, a kind of exorcism that, together with Jungian therapy and becoming a therapist herself, have led her to re-owning herself, her Jewish identity and belonging. She later translated her drawings into small tapestries. While her drawings were instinctive and ‘raw’ (she would never describe herself as an artist), her tapestries convey a sense of calm, of building something slowly, ‘stitch by stitch until the picture emerges’, an image she uses in her therapeutic work.

I felt the whole experience uplifting.

The Library was packed and the audience was totally enraptured. Sal took a lot of interesting questions at the end. Marika is now 90 years old and unfortunately too frail to travel across London, but Sal asked us, as she does at every screening, to be videoed waving at her.

In spite of all the traumas, Marika is a luminous person, beautiful and positive in her articulate expression of her story, and an incredible example of the healing power of creativity.

Marika has written a book, The Hidden Girl, the journey of a Soul, published by SHEPHEARD-WALWYN PUBLISHERS with her story, poems, drawings and tapestries.

With HUGE thanks as always to the wonderful staff at West Greenwich Library, especially to Kim and Emma; a sad goodbye (or au revoir, perhaps…) to Kim who has been moved to a different library, and to Debra, who helped me set up my events from the start in 2017, and supported me throughout even while working part-time, and who also has been moved to a different library.

If you are interested in staging a screening, please contact producer Tracey Gardiner at tracey@gardiner.com