An engaged and enthralled audience were treated last night to the words and worlds brought to us in Greenwich by Maggie Brookes-Butt and Maggie Harris.
Maggie B-B was presenting her new collection, published in January by Greenwich Exchange. Wish contains new and selected poems (the latter taken from her six previous collections). The main theme of the new poems is grandmotherhood, and brought smiles and tears and many a-ha moments of recognition – turning everyday language into exquisite poetry by her sharpness of observation and unexpected images. I have the book now, and can’t wait to read it through. If you want a copy at a special price, go to greenex.co.uk
Maggie H read from her latest poetry collection, I Sing to the Greenhearts (Seren, 2025) and an excerpt from her memoir, Kiskadee Girl (Cane Arrow Press, 2024) – and we were immediately transported to her native Guyana. Dazzling colours and sounds (from trees, birds, people and the river that featured so prominently in Maggie’s early life) and yet more grandmothers (I’m so glad they made such a strong appearance!) were vividly portrayed in language that sometimes picked up local accents and spellings. Beautifully read, exciting, evocative, nostalgic but never sentimental – I wish I could have listened for much longer….
This was one leg of the two Maggies’ reading tour, and I wish them every success. They deserve it.
Here’s more about them:
Maggie Brookes-Butt has been writing all her life, as a journalist, BBC TV producer, creative writing academic and Royal Literary Fund Fellow. Her books include six poetry collections as Maggie Butt and two historical novels as Maggie Brookes. As well as being a writer she is a compulsive reader, hopeful gardener, dreadful cook, besotted grandmother and a Londoner to the bone, though she loves to swim in the sea. Maggie will be reading from Wish, her newly published volume of new and selected poems (Greenwich Exchange, 2025). It gathers poems from Maggie’s six previous collections – about the strength of women, concern for our planet, and hope in the power of love – alongside bitter-sweet new poems about the joys and fears of a grandmother in this troubled, vulnerable and precious world.
As well as being published widely in many journals, Maggie Harris has plenty of awards to her credit: the Guyana Prize for Literature not once but twice; The Commonwealth Short Story Regional Prize and the Wales Poetry Award.She is a Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund and has worked as Creative Writing tutor, Reader Development Worker and International Teaching Fellow. Her poem ‘Canterbury’ is an Art installation in the city’s Westgate Gardens, and ‘Lit by Fire’, her poem about the North Foreland Lighthouse, was commissioned by the BBC. She has read her work internationally and has collaborated with artists across genres since 1990, resulting in some of her work being set to music. Her poem ‘This is Not a Gospel Song’ can be heard and watched on YouTube. In 2024 she was awarded an Arts Council grant towards revisiting Guyana and its rain forest. Maggie read from her 11th book, I Sing to the Greenhearts (SEREN, 2025), and from her memoir Kiskadee Girl (Cane Arrow Press, 2024).
