Nevada Street Poets – Five Voices

September 6, 2023

On Tuesday evening, September 5th, a live and a virtual audience were treated to some moving, amusing, profound and stimulating poetry by five members of the Nevada Street Poets group.

Apart from a few issues with the audio experienced by some members of the Zoom audience (a mystery for me why it happened this time, and to some and not others…), the evening was a thorough success. Jocelyn Page, Graham High, Sarah Westcott, Richard Meier and Lorraine Mariner read from their published collections and some poems that haven’t yet been published, touching on themes such as sport, parenting, ageing, death, children, nature and the environment – and as with all poetry, the themes didn’t mean that you could pigeonhole each poem into a particular category.

We also heard two poignant tributes marking two significant losses. Lorraine Mariner ended the first set by reading ‘The Otter’ by Seamus Heaney and Jocelyn Page ended the second set reading the poem ‘A Story about Water’ by the young award winning poet Gboyega Odubanjo, who lost his life tragically just over a week ago.

A big thank you to poet Wendy French who managed the Zoom side of things with grace and patience despite the sound problems. And as always a big thank you to Debra and staff at the wonderful West Greenwich Library for being so helpful, flexible and generous.

The event was recorded and it’s available for private perusal. Please email me irena@in-words.co.uk for the link.

And here is how you can buy their books:

Sarah Westcott: https://sarahwestcott.co.uk/contact

Lorraine Mariner: https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/lorraine-mariner/5624 and https://www.candlestickpress.co.uk/biography/mariner-lorraine/ 

Richard Meier: https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/richard-meier/misadventure/9781447208464 and https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/richard-meier/search-party/9781509851980

Graham High: www.grahamhighartist.com

Jocelyn Page: http://www.jocelyn-page.com

And here are short bios of the poets in alphabetical order…

Graham High is a widely published poet with eight chapbooks and collections to date. He is also involved with other forms of writing, including haiku and haibun and was President of the British Haiku Society for four years. Graham is also a painter and sculptor with exhibitions and commissions both in the UK and abroad, an Animatronic Model Designer in the Film Industry working on the effects of over 40 feature films since 1981 including ‘Aliens’, ‘The Golden Compass’, Labyrinth, Babe, The English Patient and the ‘Harry Potter’ series.  He now shares his time between London and Norfolk where his sculpture studio is.

Lorraine Mariner lives in London and works 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 most recent publication is the poetry chapbook, Anchorage with Grey Suit Editions (2020).

Richard Meier won the inaugural Picador Poetry Prize in 2010. He has published two collections with Picador: Search Party (2019) and Misadventure (2012), which was shortlisted for the Aldeburgh Prize. 

Jocelyn Page, a poet from Connecticut living in London, has published in various journals including The Spectator, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Salzburg, South Carolina Review and Poetry Review. Her debut pamphlet, smithereens, was published in 2010 by tall lighthouse press and her 2016 You’ve Got to Wait Till the Man You Trust Says Go was the winner of the Goldsmiths’ Writer Centre’s inaugural Poetry Pamphlet award. She has held residencies at The Reach Climbing Centre in Woolwich and the 999 Club homeless centre. She teaches English and Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College and the University of London Worldwide. http://www.jocelyn-page.com

Sarah Westcott’s first collection Slant Light (Pavilion Poetry), was highly commended in the Forward Prize. Her second collection, Bloom, also with Pavilion Poetry, was longlisted in the 2022 Laurel Prize for ecopoetry. Sarah was a journalist for twenty years and now works as a freelance writer, editor and tutor. Work has appeared on beermats, billboards and buses, baked into sourdough bread and installed in a nature reserve, triggered by footsteps. She is shortly starting a PhD in zoopoetics at the University of Birmingham.

Events

TUESDAY NOVEMBER 26th at West Greenwich Library, 7pm (doors open at 6.45)
BETWEEN LANGUAGES – an evening with poets who write in English while English is not their native language – with Natan Barreto, Isabel Bermudez, Farah Naz and Kostya Tsolakis.

What are the internal processes that allow poetic expression of beauty and meaning in a language different from the native one? Is there a ‘shadow language’? And does that language leave the shadows and becomes ‘light’? As bilingual (though not technically) myself, I find the concept both important and intriguing. I know that our journeys into the English language are bound to be very different and I am looking forward to a conversation about it after what promises to be great and diverse readings.

A FREE event as always, with books for sale and refreshments galore…

Here’s some information about the poets:

Natan Barreto was born in Salvador, Brazil. He has lived in Rio, Paris, Rome, and, since 1992, in London. He is the author of seven collections of poetry in Portuguese: Under the Roofs of the Night (1999); Hiding Places on Paper (2007); Still Movement (2016); Creatures: animal sketches (2017); A backyard and other corners (2018), which won the Sosígenes Costa Poetry Prize, awarded by the Academy of Letters of Ilhéus, in Bahia, Brazil; The Rhythm of the Circle: photographic poems (2019); and The Hollow Soul (2021). He is also a published novelist, biographer and translator. Natan’s poems in English have appeared in Poets Adrift: first anthology of Brazilian diaspora poetry (2013); and, in 2019, an anthology of his poetry was published in German, titled Ausgewählte Gedichte. He has given poetry readings at the Brazilian Embassy in London, the Museum of London, the Royal Court Theatre, the Barbican, and the universities of Queen Mary and Nottingham. www.natanbarreto.com

Isabel Bermudez is a poet and textile artist living in Orpington, Kent. Her collection Serenade (Paekakariki Press, 2020) features poems evoking Spain and the New World, with illustrations by Simon Turvey. Her most recent published collection is Bar de las Reminiscencias (Paekakariki Press, 2024), also with illustrations by Simon Turvey. She performs her poetry widely at readings and festivals and was recently hosted by the Colombian Embassy and the Instituto Cervantes, Manchester, in conversation with Welsh poet and translator, Richard Gwyn. In a previous life she lived and worked as a television producer/director in Sri Lanka and as a documentary film maker in Colombia. She has held many jobs, including grape picker in France, shop assistant and special correspondent; she now works in the Sen department of an Academy in South East London. More at www.isabel-bermudez.com.

Farah Naz is a British Bangladeshi poet, writer, story teller and translator. As well as teaching at a Lewisham primary school, she is a performing member of the acclaimed storytelling group ‘EAST’ and is Director of the British Bilingual Poetry Collective (BBPC). Maya Mirror of Soul, her collection of English poems was published in 2004 and her Bengali poem book Hemonter Chirkut in 2022. Farah’s poetic themes encompass nature, human emotions and metamorphosis of love and life. Farah received the ‘Youth Leadership Award’ from Unicef, Bangladesh in 1999 for her writing, and won the ‘Story of 1971’ short story competition by Tower Hamlets Council in 2021. Her poems and stories have been widely published in various books and magazines such as Swirl of Words, British Bangladeshi Poetry Anthology, London Folk Tales for Children and many more. Along with writing poetry, Farah enjoys cooking and nature photography. 

Kostya Tsolákis was born and raised in Athens, Greece, and now lives in London. He is founding editor of harana poetry, the online magazine for poets writing in English as a second or parallel language. In 2019 he won the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition (ESL category). His poems have been widely published in magazines, including fourteen poems, Magma, Poetry London, The Poetry Review and Under the Radar, and anthologies, such as 100 Queer Poems (Vintage, 2022). His debut poetry pamphlet, Ephebos, was published by ignitionpress in November 2020. Greekling, his much-anticipated poetry collection celebrates and commemorates damaged and rejected Greek bodies, be they of flesh and blood or made of marble. The collection intertwines Greek culture, history and poetic influences with the contemporary queer experience in a perceptive, lyrical, and deeply evocative way.

And save these dates….

TUESDAY FEBRUARY 4 at West Greenwich Library- readings by Jacqueline Saphra and Sue Rose.

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