At First Sight: floating islands, floating lands

July 4, 2018

in-words’ first-ever event at the British Library played in front a full room on the evening when people could easily have dropped out to watch football or tennis… And we were all treated to an evening of storytelling, poetry and music from voices and sounds from England and Oceania, highlighting issues raised by the voyages of James Cook (the subject of an excellent exhibition at the British Library)

Vanessa Lee Miller – poet, journalist, playwright from Hawaii was the force behind the project, and her enthusiasm, grace and perseverance ensured the participation and support of many diverse creatives. Her own beautiful poem, recited in English and then read in Hawaiian, and her evocative short end-poem focused appropriately on water: fresh water as source of life and death and the ocean penetrating a bay haunted, according to local legend, by Cook’s spirit in the shape of a great white shark. I am truly grateful to her for involving me in this exciting project. I learnt so much working on it!

We had live music played on many instruments collected, and in some cases constructed by Giles Leaman, from a didgeridoo to percussion to the smallest whistle, providing the mood for the readings – eerie, martial, gentle and always evocative.

Rich Sylvester’s story followed the young James Cook getting his sealegs and fulfilling his passion for mapping and cartography, and had us spellbound as it recounted his encounters with Oceanic peoples and the blunders and heavy handed attitudes and responses that led to the killing of many indigenous men, the abuse of many women and ultimately to his own demise in Hawaii.

Rich was also the voice of Cook in the reading of the final pages of Cook in the Underworld, a long poem/libretto by Maori poet Robert Sullivan (b.1967). The part of Orpheus was read by Crystal Te Moananui-Squares, photographer and member of the Interisland Collective of Maori/New Zealand descent, and the ‘judge’ was Jo Walsh, a London-based artist and Pacific Arts Producer of Maori/Scottish ancestry.

Sara Taukolonga, a freelance journalist and performance artist of Tongan/Latvian Jewish descent, read a poem written by the longest-reigning queen of Tonga, Queen Salote Tupou III (1918-1965), translated into English by Sara herself, who then sang it in Tongan, accompanied on guitar by her brother David.

Australian Rhys Feeney gave a sharp and painfully accurate potted history of the Aboriginal People and of the contemptuous disregard for their status as human beings by the colonial powers since 1770, and ended his performance with a cutting poem by Australian poet Steven Oliver.

I know I’m biased, but I feel really happy to have been part of this. My thanks to all the participants, the audience and to Jonah Albert and Steven Gale of the Cultural Events Department at the British Library for giving Vanessa and me the space and time to produce this wonderful and moving evening.

Sadly, no one was available to record it in video or photographs…

Events

TUESDAY MARCH 25 at West Greenwich Library, 7.30 – ‘Mica Press launch: new poetry from Rosie Johnston, Michael Vince and Antony Johae.’ With Nayma Chamchoun, Michael Foley and Leslie Bell.

An evening of poetry from six very different voices. Here’s something about them:

Leslie Bell was born in Scotland and spent his boyhood on Tyneside, in Finland, and in Scotland. While studying in Washington D.C.,  he came across Dante’s La Vita Nuova and promptly decided to ‘read’ English Literature instead of History at King’s College, Cambridge. His working career has been varied to say the least: he made an educational filmstrip on Elizabethan theatres, sold ice cream, worked as a hospital porter, auxiliary nurse, carpenter and plasterer, potato salesman, English teacher, drama student, printer, bookshop assistant, systems programmer in university web support and e-learning, and support worker with autistic adults. In 2012 Les founded Mica Press & Campanula Books in Wivenhoe, Essex, where he has lived since 1978. At Mica he edits and publishes poetry and non-fiction. His own poems have appeared in many magazines and in the anthology Days begin… (ed. Peter Kennedy, Wivenbooks, 2016). Archipelagos, poems by Leslie Bell, (Mica Press, 2012) is available in paperback from https://micapress.uk/ .

Nayma Chamchoun is a British Moroccan writer, poet and performance poet. Her writing is influenced by her cultural duality. She is interested in female voices in the diaspora communities, the challenges they face within them, especially around the taboos surrounding mental health. Nayma is an active member of London’s vibrant Poetry and Spoken Word community, the international Poetry community online and has performed her work at several Poetry Open Mic events including the one marking Grenfell 5 year Anniversary, Women Writing Lockdown Exhibition at the House of Commons. Her work was featured on West Wiltshire Radio & BBC Radio London several times. Nayma’s first poetry collection COVID: THE WORDY WILDS OF A MIND UNDER LOCKDOWN was published to critical acclaim in 2022. Her second collection, Saging Not Ageing, was published on June 1st 2024.

Michael Foley is a Northern Irish writer who lives in London, where he worked as a Lecturer in Information Technology at the University of Westminster before taking early retirement to concentrate on writing. He has published four novels, four philosophy books and six poetry books, including New and Selected Poems (Blackstaff Press 2011) and, most recently, a long poem, The Whole Thing (Mica Press 2023). Plenty to read about him and details of all his books on his website michael-foley.net. 

Antony Johae gained a Ph.D from the University of Essex with a comparative study of Dostoevsky and Kafka. His book Franz Kafka, Maker of Dreams will be published this year by Cambridge Scholars. Antony has taught literature in Ghana, Tunisia and Kuwait. He retired in 2009 and now divides his time between Colchester and Lebanon (his wife’s country of origin). Since retiring, he has published four poetry collections: Poems of the East (Gipping Press, 2015); After-Images: Homage to Eric Rohmer (Poetry Salzburg, 2019); Ex-Changes (The High Window, 2020); Home Poems (Orphean Press, 2022), and most recently the pamphlet Foreign Forays: Poems of Travel in Europe and the Med, from which he will be reading at the event. Palewell Press, which specialises in works on refugees, human rights and ecology, will bring out Antony’s prose collection Lines on Lebanon later this year.

Rosie Johnston’s writing spans journalism, drama, fiction and poetry, with novels published in Dublin and London and four books of poetry by Lapwing Publications in her native Belfast. Six-Count Jive (Lapwing, 2019), describes the inner landscape of her complex post-traumatic stress disorder and led to readings at Glasgow and Vigo universities and inclusion in Her Other Language (Arlen House, 2020). Rosie’s poetry also appears in the Northern Irish section of Places of Poetry (OneWorld, 2020), the Mary Evans Poems and Pictures blog and various magazines. Her first venture back into fiction in ten years, Laughing and Grief, was published in American Writers Review. Rosie will be reading from her fifth book of poetry, Safe Ground, just published by Mica Press. Rosie reviews poetry for London Grip and is a generous and inspirational teacher and mentor. rosiejohnstonwrites.com

Michael Vince taught in Italy and the UK before emigrating to Greece in 1977 where he worked in language teaching, teacher education, and materials writing.  His son Alex grew up in Athens, and lives there still with his Greek family, so Greece is a large part of his life still, and some of his poems are set there. Michael has published a lot of ELT textbooks of various kinds with Heinemann and Macmillan, and has been a freelance author since 1988. Since returning to the UK in 1994 he has lived mainly in different parts of London, and tends to write himself into anywhere new. He now lives in Greenwich, which features a lot in the poems of Back to Life. Since the 1960s his poetry has appeared in numerous magazines, and his collections include: The Orchard Well, Carcanet 1978; Mountain, Epic and Dream, Hunting Raven 1981; In The New District, Carcanet 1982; Gaining Definition, R L Barth 1986;  Plain Text, Mica Press 2015, Long Distance, Mica Press 2020,  A Conversation with George Seferis, Rack Press 2022, Back to Life, Mica Press 2023, and Legwork Mica Press 2024. At present (2025) he is writing poems mainly about Water.

Doors will open at 7 for a 7.30 start. Refreshments and books available. Free event, all welcome.

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 – ‘Telltale Poets: Sarah Barnsley, Robin Houghton and Peter Kenny’