Of Safe Ground: ‘Rosie’s verse, always pitch perfect – whether recounting traumatic childhood experiences or giving wise and witty advice to young women, or describing being up a mountain with her Father or by the sea with her Mother, and later as an adult herself – brings to life her own emotional and physical worlds in an immediately accessible way. The title of her prose poem, ‘Laughing and Grief’, says it all.’: Irena Hill

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[Six-Count Jive] is a superbly crafted piece of work whose language is at times sublime. … In its deliberate brevity it invites us to mine for layers of meaning and rewards constant re-reading. Its back story and message of survival are life affirming but significantly, this is not an exercise in therapy, instead, Six-Count Jive is a superb piece of art: High Window magazine

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Mica Press published Safe Ground, Rosie’s fifth book of poetry, in spring 2025. Dennis Greig’s Lapwing Publications published four of Rosie’s poetry books, the latest Six-Count Jive in 2019.

Recent anthologies include Places of Poetry: Mapping the Nation in Verse (OneWorld, 2020), Her Other Language (Arlen House, 2020), Live Canon’s anthologies 154: In Response to Shakespeare’s Sonnets (2016) and More New Poems for Christmas (2018), American Writers Review 2021 – Turmoil and Recovery (San Fedele Press) and Fevers of the Mind V (2021) – Overcome (David L O’Nan). Rosie’s poems have appeared or featured in The Phare, the ‘Poems and Pictures’ blog of the Mary Evans Picture Library website, Hedgerow magazine, Fevers of the Mind, London Grip, Culture NI, A New Ulster, FourxFour, The Honest Ulsterman and Words for the Wild.

Rosie has read her poetry widely, including the Faversham Literary Festival (each year since 2020, where she also hosts), Gloucester Poetry Festival, Canterbury Festival, Hungerford Literary Festival, Watford’s Big Word festival, Vigo and Glasgow Universities, In-Words in Greenwich, Winchester’s Loose Muse, the Linen Hall Library and Crescent Arts Centre in Belfast, the Poetry Cafe in Covent Garden, the Troubadour, Torriano, the Norwich Bicycle Shop, the Pie Factory in Margate and Whitstable’s Harbour Books. She welcomes invitations to read where you are.

After a law degree at Cambridge, Rosie worked as a solicitor until her three children were born when she combined being a mum at home with freelance journalism for the Evening Standard, Independent on Sunday, Sunday Tribune and various magazines. For the first five years of Golf Quarterly, she wrote its ‘Muriel’ golf widow columns and since 2014, has been reviewing poetry for London Grip international online culture magazine, a fascinating browse.

Journalism taught Rosie to make words clear, short and to the point. After trying without much success to be a playwright, she turned to fiction and poetry. Rosie (an AI-free zone) has since been published in Dublin, Belfast, Essex, London, and the United States.

In September 2018 Rosie completed a four-year term as Chair of the Association Committee at Churchill College, Cambridge where in 2011 she set up and continues to lead the Churchill Writers group. Over the years, she has also facilitated writing groups in Canterbury, Bermondsey, Greenwich and Margate.

Read reviews of Rosie’s books here.

WHICH ROSIE JOHNSTON?

You will find several Rosie Johnstons on Google, busy all over the world. There’s an Australian celebrity make-up artist (Rosie Jane Johnston), a fine artist also in Australia (Rosie Wingrove Johnston), a Rosie Johnston who produces and directs opera (for Opera Unlimited) and another who works for Radio Prague.

There’s even an English one who did time in jail for murder and wrote a memoir about it. If you’ve read The Most Intimate Place, you could be forgiven for deducing from its prison detail that the Rosie of this website and she are the same person but they are not. The research for The Most Intimate Place came from ten years as a prison visitor. This Rosie wishes all other Rosie Johnstons every success and happiness.