‘One Year On’

March 25th

If you wanted to look for a mirror of all the different emotions, the heartaches, fears, fury, disbelief, warmth, solidarity, nostalgia and love experienced these last twelve months, you needn’t have looked further than the words written and read so beautifully by Rosie Johnston, Alex Josephy, Colin Pink, Jacqueline Saphra and Rob Walton.

Voices and styles so different and so complementary, painting what we have gone through so far in the pandemic with an astonishingly varied palette – confirming that we would be so much worse off without poetry!

If anyone who was part of the large audience attending on the 25th is reading this and wishes to send me (irena@in-words.co.uk) comments on, even a short review of, all or part of the evening, please come forward, don’t be shy! I am so involved in the whole event that it takes me a while to put finger to keyboard and write anything sensible….

In the meanwhile, here are the short biographies of the readers, and information on how to get in touch with them and/or purchase their publications.

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 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 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 has just published his debut poetry collection, This Poem Here, 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 October 8th: ‘Loving Nature in Troubled Times’
7pm at West Greenwich Library

As close as we could to National Poetry day, the launch of Derrick Porter’s and Jude Rosen’s new poetry collections (The Art of Timing and Reclamations from London’s Edgelands respectively, both with Paekakariki Press), who will be joined by Alex Josephy and Jane McLaughlin.

A free event. Books and pamphlets will be available to buy. Plenty of refreshments (donations welcome). Door will open at 6.45 for a 7pm start.

Here’s some information about the poets:

Before moving to Rye, Alex Josephy lived in London and sometimes in Italy. Now her imagination and her poems live in three different worlds; she feels lucky to be discovering a new one among the East Sussex marshlands. Alex has worked as a teacher and university lecturer and as an NHS education adviser. Her most recent collection is Again Behold the Stars, a Cinnamon Press pamphlet award winner, 2023. Other work includes Naked Since Faversham (Pindrop Press, 2020) and White Roads (Paekakariki Press, 2018). Her poems have won the McLellan and Battered Moons prizes, and have appeared in magazines and anthologies in the UK, Italy and India. You can find out more on her website: www.alexjosephy.net

Jane McLaughlin writes and publishes poetry and short stories. Her publications with Cinnamon Press include Quintet (poetry with four other poets); Quartet (short stories with three other authors) and Lockdown (prizewinning full poetry collection). Her short stories have been widely published by Arachne Press, The Frogmore Papers, Under the Radar and elsewhere. Her short story ‘Trio for Four Voices’ was included in Best British Short Stories 2018 (Salt). She has been longlisted in the National Poetry Competition and has been placed and listed in many other competitions. Ephemeral, her collection of thirty poems on the themes of climate emergency and the natural world was one of the winners of the Dreich Classic Chapbook competition in 2023. Phil Barnett writes of Ephemeral: These fine poems are like breaths on a window pane. Her words condense the ineffable…into something we can see, read, feel.

Derrick Porter grew up in Hoxton and why he began to write poetry from the age of thirteen remains one of life’s unsolved mysteries. From the time he first began to write, to well into his thirties, he wrote in ignorance of there being a poetry scene. In his early forties he joined a ‘Writing for Pleasure’ group tutored by the poet Ted Walter – the first poet he ever met. Ted suggested he send his poems to Envoi, and from then on Derrick’s poems began to appear alongside mainstream poets. In 2002 he joined the Poetry School where – under the guidance of Mimi Khalvati – he became part of the wider poetry scene. His poems have appeared in magazines such as Magma, Acumen, Interpreter House, The New Writer, Brittle Star, Poetry Review, The Long Poem Magazine, and in two anthologies: I Am Twenty People, and This Little Stretch of Life. He has also enjoyed success in a number of poetry competitions. His second collection, The Art of Timing, is coming out in September for Paekakariki Press.

Jude Rosen is a former historian, urban researcher and translator and as a poet currently runs workshops for refugees. Her pamphlet, A Small Gateway, (Hearing Eye, 2009) explored East End Jewish life and intercultural exchange with Berlin, Sarajevo, Palestine. At the moment she is writing a long sequence on Gaza. Reclamations from London’s Edgelands,  which emerged from artistic resistance to the Olympic redevelopment, has recently been published by Paekakariki Press (May 2024). Poems from it appeared in The Art of Dissent: Adventures in London’s Olympic State, (Marshgate Press, 2012); Long Poem Magazine, South Bank Poetry London Poems Anthology and Envoi and were performed on poem and living history walks of the marshes, 2015-19 (poemswalks.wordpress.com). A video “Desire Paths – a film haibun” of a walk on Leyton Marsh was produced by Fawzia Kane in 2016 (https://vimeo.com/197324168).

NOVEMBER 26th – an evening with poets who write in English while English is not their native language – with Natan Barreto, Isabel Bermudez and Kostya Tsolakis (and more).

FEBRUARY 4 – readings by Jacqueline Saphra and Sue Rose