Following my post on 9 January about the passing of dear Dennis Greig, here is a marvellous obituary in The Guardian by Peter Pegnall, one of Dennis’s dearest friends and a poet published many times by Lapwing.
‘Think where man’s glory most begins and ends / And say my glory was I had such friends.’ W B Yeats
I’m thrilled to let you know that Mica Press has accepted my fifth book of poetry for publication next spring or summer. Mica is an extraordinary little press in Wivenhoe near Colchester run by Leslie Bell. In 1984 Les, with a striking miner and a lorry driver to help, carried a second hand press into his sitting room to carry out his poetic dream. Life doesn’t flow in straight lines and it wasn’t until 2012 that Mica was really under way as one of the most select and excellent presses in the UK.
Having seen my Dylan Thomas parody ‘Just the Ticket’ online, he contacted me to ask if I would join his submissions window last autumn so of course I did. Les (an excellent poet himself) says: ‘Mica Press hardly claims to know what poetry is, what work it will publish, as it can only declare itself in a poetry nation seemingly pockmarked with publicity about prizes by appearing opaque but letting some firelight through, like the mineral it is named after.’
Mica (pronounced Mike-ah) is a sharp, gleaming mineral used (among other things) as an abrasive in toothpastes and to provide the gleam in some cosmetics. Les says the word is Latin for a crumb, and probably influenced by micare, to glitter. I grew up looking for the starlight of flint in dark Mourne granite and love that our cover for ‘Safe Ground’ is to be a photograph (of me aged around seven) taken by my darling dad close to the Mourne wall in County Down.
Mica’s books are beautiful to hold as well as read. I look forward to our editing process and am deeply honoured to become a Mica poet.
I am editing this post in March 2024 to bring you the latest on Mica Press’s website, namely their new titles and a new online bookshop!
Just when winter feels never ending with the festivities far behind us, here on the Kent coast we have Faversham Literary Festival to cheer up our February. This year’s programme is as stunning as ever including Tim Peake, Jeanette Winterson, Roger McGough, Glen Matlock, Dame Kelly Holmes, Holly McNish… on and on goes the fabulous line-up.
For writers, there are so many treats like a memoir class on Saturday 17, a local author showcase on Sunday 18, a writing ‘walkshop’ on the 24th, and short story writing and ‘literary exploration’ both on Sunday 25.
Poetry features as always with the Poetry Slam on Friday 23 evening – come and hear among others T S Eliot prize winner (2021) Joelle Taylor and have a go yourself – and on the Saturday the Poetry Hub introduced by Angela Dye and me.
First off at the Hub (Saturday 24, 11am), in Faversham’s medieval Guildhall in the centre of the town, I have the treat of reading with poets Bethany Goodwill and David Dykes who run the monthly poetry event Big Trouble in Rochester.
Fiona Sinclair, Nancy Charley and Clair Meyrick come next, then Amy Acre and Christopher Horton. At 2pm, Derek Sellen, Gary Studley and Greta Ross take over, followed by Katy Evans-Bush and Jacqueline Saphra. Maggie Harris and Setareh Ebrahimi read at 4pm, including an interview of Maggie, and at 5.25pm we close with the all-important Open Mic. All tickets are free – please come.
I’ll be marshalling too throughout the week – say hello if you’re there!
My Churchill Writers are meeting this afternoon, online because of weather at this time of year in the UK and because so many of us are unwell. Here are some prompts for anyone who can’t be with us – five to ten minutes for each one, just to see where they take you. Longer if the writing is taking hold:
‘Do I dare to eat a peach?’ From Eliot’s The Love Song of Alfred J Prufrock
‘Grief is a straightforward emotion’ – Orpheus – Heathcliff – Edna de Millay
‘Publish and be damned’ – the Duke of Wellington to aspiring blackmailers
‘I hear it in the deep heart’s core’ from Yeats’s poem The Lake Isle of Innisfree
Happy writing!
On Christmas Day Dennis Greig passed away after a valiant fight with the HHT that has plagued him and his family, and cancer.
Dennis said that he and his wife were proud to be poetry midwives and my goodness, they were magnificent at it. When Dennis accepted my first book of 17s in 2010, I was putting a cruel marriage behind me and with Lapwing I felt safe for the first time in a long while. Dennis was unique in the depth of his support for all his poets. Poetically, if he saw a glimmer in us, he nurtured it, always gently, selflessly. Personally, where it was needed he did the same, constant and fatherly. I’d never thought of myself as a poet but he managed to give me the confidence to say I am one. I will always be grateful.
Dennis was a poet himself, recording Northern Ireland’s euphemistically named ‘Troubles’ in Belfast with intelligence and lyrical sensitivity. Poetry was rising from the rubble of civil war then and Dennis was one of the important writers at its heart. In 1988 Dennis and his wife Rene (a magnificent artistic force in her own right in theatre, script writing, dance and inter-sectarian work) set up Lapwing Publications. Over the years they produced over 500 distinctively beautiful slim volumes on high quality paper, each white or cream cover with one of Dennis’s chosen thumbnail pictures on the front, all hand pressed in Belfast. I recognised one across a crowded poetry reading in east Kent last summer, unmistakably a Lapwing book, a gem.
Damien Smyth of Arts Council NI, a fine poet himself, has described Lapwing as ‘a press only marginally second (in Ireland) to Salmon Publishing in the volume of its output and sturdiness of its platform for new voices’. Both Lapwing and Salmon pride themselves on the high proportion of women poets they publish.
Rene was undoubtedly Dennis’s engine and they had one of those powerful marriages that gathers, warms and heartens anyone near them.
Dennis deserves his rest now. The past year has been impossibly hard for him and his loved ones. My condolences to them all. No publisher ever worked harder, for Lapwing and for his poets, and Lapwing’s achievement will always shine, not just in the Irish and English-speaking poetry worlds but worldwide. I am proud to be part of it.
Rosie Johnston 