What better way to look back over this extraordinary year together than with poetry and story. On Thursday 25, my dear friend Irena Hill will host a Zoom event in her In-Words series from Greenwich, London called ONE YEAR ON. To receive the Zoom link, please just email irena@in-words.co.uk
Irena describes her line-up like this – in alphabetical order so I’m leading us off:
Rosie Johnston‘s four poetry books are published by Lapwing Publications in her native Belfast, most recently Six-Count Jive (2019), a description in 17-syllable stanzas of the inner landscape of post-traumatic stress disorder. Last December top Irish poetry blogger Billy Mills chose it as one of his top three Irish poetry books of 2020. Rosie’s poems have appeared or featured in the Mary Evans Picture Library’s Poems and Pictures blog, London Grip, Culture NI, FourxFour, The Honest Ulsterman, Ink, Sweat & Tears and Hedgerow. Anthologies include Live Canon’s ‘154 Project: In Response to Shakespeare’s Sonnets’ (2016), Her Other Language published by Arlen House in 2020 and the Northern Irish section of Places of Poetry (OneWorld, 2020). Before being distracted by poetry, Rosie had two novels published, in London and Dublin. For this event she will read the first fiction she has written in over ten years. You can find her and her books online at www.rosiejohnstonwrites.com
Alex Josephy lives in London and Italy. Her collection Naked Since Faversham was published by Pindrop Press in 2020 (http://www.pindroppress.com). Other work includes White Roads, poems set in Italy(Paekakariki Press, 2018, https://www.paekakarikipress.com), and Other Blackbirds (Cinnamon Press, 2016, https://www.cinnamonpress.com). Her poems have won the McLellan and Battered Moons prizes, and have appeared in magazines and anthologies in the UK and Italy. As part of the Poetry School Mixed Borders scheme, she has been poet-in-residence at Rainham Hall, Essex, and in Markham Square, London. Find out more on her website: www.alexjosephy.net Her books can be ordered from the publishers, or for signed copies email Alex on alex@alexjosephy.net.
Colin Pink’s poems and fiction have appeared in a wide range of literary magazines and anthologies. His first book of poems, Acrobats of Sound, was published in 2016 (by Poetry Salzburg Press) and The Ventriloquist Dummy’s Lament, a pamphlet of 21 villanelles, with woodcuts by Daniel Goodwin, was published in 2019 ( by Against the Grain Press). He is having two new collections published this year: Wreck of the Jeanne Gougy, a pamphlet also published by Paekakariki with woodcut illustrations by Daniel Goodwin and Typicity, his second full-length collection to be published by Dempsey and Windle in April. You can obtain copies of his books directly from Colin by emailing him on colinpinkconsulting@gmail.com or order them from the publisher’s websites. Visit his Facebook page to see announcements: https://www.facebook.com/colin.pink.37/
Jacqueline Saphra’s The Kitchen of Lovely Contraptions (flipped eye 2011)was shortlisted for the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. If I Lay on my Back I Saw Nothing but Naked Women (The Emma Press 2014) won the Saboteur Award for Best Collaborative Work. All My Mad Mothers (Nine Arches Press 2017)was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot prize. Two of her sonnet sequences A Bargain with the Light: Poems after Lee Miller (2017) and Veritas: Poems After Artemisia (2020) are published by Hercules Editions. Her third collection, Dad, Remember You Are Dead was published by Nine Arches Press in 2019. She will read from her latest book, One Hundred Lockdown Sonnets, published in February 2021 by Nine Arches Press and now available in paperback. She is a founder member of Poets for the Planet, lives in London and teaches at The Poetry School.
Scunthorpe-born Rob Walton lives in Whitley Bay. His poetry has been published by The Emma Press, Strix, The Interpreter’s House, Sidekick Books, Frances Lincoln, Macmillan and others. His works of fiction have been published in the UK, Ireland, USA, Canada and New Zealand. Arachne Press will publish his debut poetry collection, This Poem Here, in March 2021. He collated the New Hartley Memorial Pathway text. You can follow him on Twitter: @anicelad.
I hope your appetite has been truly whetted. See you on the 25th, wherever you are.
To get the zoom link, just email Alison admin@artsdestination.co.uk 
Portstewart Strand in Northern Ireland where I grew up. Beautiful, whatever the weather. 