Safe Ground’s publication day

March 25, 2025March 25, 2025Leave a comment

It’s Safe Ground‘s big day! You can find it on Mica Press’s website here and on Amazon. No reviews yet but the initial responses are huge smiles and enthusiasm.

If you’d like to buy one from me direct, signed specially for you, please don’t hesitate to contact me at rosiejohnstonwrites@gmail.com

This evening we’re celebrating in West Greenwich, London at an event run by my dear friend, Irena Hill of In-Words. As well as Safe Ground, Mica will launch Michael Vince’s Legwork and Antony Johae’s Foreign Forays and Mica poets Nayma Chanchoun, Michael Foley and Leslie Bell (Mr Mica himself) will read too. More details are here: please scroll down In-Words’ events column on the right.

The cover photograph is me beside the Mourne Wall in County Down, taken by my father more years ago than I care to count. As I said in my dedication to Bittersweet Seventeens (Lapwing Publications, 2014), he gave me life in so many ways.

Writing prompts for today

March 22, 2025March 22, 2025Leave a comment

These are for my Cambridge writers who are joining me later today. They’re for you too – if you find something helpful here. Happy writing:

I can still smell the smoke from the house burning in my brain

Dorianne Laux: Finger exercises for poets

The dog looked as if it was about to cry, too

Orhan Pamuk: The Museum of Innocence (trans Maureen Freely)

The nightmares. Some kept coming back like that one about the flowers. Enormous blossoms of all colors, opening and closing their petal-portals, come in, come in!

Lygia Fagundes Telles: The Girl in the Photograph (trans Margaret A Neves)

You may collect all the iroko seeds in the world, open the soil and put them there. It will all be in vain. The great tree chooses where to grow and we find it there; so it is with greatness in men.

Chinua Achebe: No Longer at Ease

I have frequently observed this curious aspect of power: that it is often when one is physically closest to its source that one is least well informed as to what is actually going on.

Robert Harris: Imperium (told by Tiro, Cicero’s confidential secretary for 36 years)

Poetry Wivenhoe in the spring

March 18, 2025March 18, 2025Leave a comment

Here in the south east of England, it’s a beautiful, sunny day with spring beginning to feel like a reality at last. I’m delighted that Peter Kennedy of Poetry Wivenhoe has found and included some of my micro-poems from Six-Count Jive (Lapwing Publications, 2019) for the daily poem today.

Have a lovely day!

‘Safe Ground’ coming soon on Amazon, £10 a pop

March 16, 2025March 16, 2025Leave a comment

‘Safe Ground’ can be with you from Amazon as soon as Thursday 27th of this month, at just £10 a copy. So many poetry presses have left the £10 price tag behind these days – thanks to Mica Press for managing to keep prices down. Happy reading!

Prompts: latest from ‘Where to Start Writing’ in Margate

March 10, 2025March 10, 2025Leave a comment

Yesterday’s written prompts from our Where to Start session yesterday in Marine Studios in Margate. A beautiful evening as we came out, with Turner skies:

‘Looking back, in many ways the days of the front line were my halcyon days.’

Time Come, Linton Kewsi Johnson about Railton Road in its ‘front line’ times

‘We set off the week before Christmas. It was freezing in London and our luggage sagged under the weight of our expectations and sketchbooks.’

Zandra Rhodes in Iconic

‘Dear Lonely Hearts, / my name is Nate / my hobbies are weightlifting / and tempting fate.’

Roger McGough in The Collected Poems: 1959-2024

‘Behold my bold provider, he can hunt and he can trap, / He can make a set of hinges from a piece of leather strap’

Pam Ayres, Doggedly Onward: A Life in Poems

When I come out of the bathroom, I hear Mum and Mervyn talking downstairs. At the mention of my name, I pause in the hallway to listen, my hair dripping, a towel wrapped around my waist like an untidy skirt

The Lost Past of Billy McQueen, Neil Alexander

Safe Ground in Wivenhoe’s Old Grocery yesterday

March 9, 2025Leave a comment

Wivenhoe in Essex was all sunshine and spreading buds yesterday and people who could hardly believe that it really was early spring. Leslie Bell of Mica Press met AC Bevan and me off the London train and we walked along the riverside with almost forgotten warmth on our backs. We were heading for the Old Grocery, a beautiful little gallery in the town centre where AC and I would read from our new collections with Antony Johae, all of us Mica poets. The audience were wonderful – laughter and a few tears of course, excellent questions and lovely company. I’ll remember this event as one of the warmest I’ve experienced. Very many thanks to Les Bell, AC and Antony, and to Della and Jonathan of the gallery.

AC, Antony and Les, with me in white

New events are coming up like daffodils

March 6, 2025Leave a comment

Events in London, Essex and Kent are coming up with the daffodils. This Saturday’s is in Wivenhoe in Essex near the home of Safe Ground‘s publisher, Mica Press. I look forward very much to the honour of reading among other Mica poets. If you’d like me to come and read near where you are, please do get in touch: rosiejohnstonwrites@gmail.com I’d love to hear from you. Details of all my events are here.

You can pre-order Safe Ground on Mica’s website here. After its launch in West Greenwich on Tuesday 25 March, I will post some of the new poems so that you have a feel for this new collection.

Faversham Literary Festival 2025

March 6, 2025March 6, 2025Leave a comment

For several years now, I’ve had the great fun of hosting poets at the Faversham Literary Festival and generally helping out. It’s in February, just when we need a lift after a long winter, and every year we say afterwards that it was the best yet. Somehow it always is. Congratulations to Amanda and Mark who run it with Will and the tech team and Megan, our marvellous woman with the clipboard. Here are a handful of photos of what we got up to:

Below is our outstanding showcase of local authors, with a picture below of me and my shepherd’s crook, in case anyone went on too long…