My last post for 2022, I promise, is this review in London Grip of Caroline Carver’s latest book, called Cannon Ball with Feathers. Happy reading.

I wish you health, love and happy writing throughout 2023.

Well into his eighties and not so steady on his feet, my father would drive from his home in Belfast past drumlins and sheep fields to his beloved Mourne mountains in County Down. Safely back, he would call and regale me with tales of the people he’d had wee chats with and the places he’d revisited, how much he loved the air there, the spirits of the mountains. As a young man he’d climbed there at this time of year, overnight in a canvas tent with his friends, waking to the glint of first sunlight on snow all around them.

On one of my visits from London, I persuaded him to talk about what he remembered. He was in his twenties, a teacher at Down High, when he discovered rock-climbing. Thanks to weekends clambering all over the place with the minimal equipment of the time, he’s recorded as having led six Mourne first ascents. He and his friends went on to climb in other countries but it was always the Mournes my darling father loved best.

My poem Off the Map passes on what he told me about one of those first ascents: the ‘F-M’ climb on Slieve Lamagan. I’m thrilled to see it here on the wonderful Poems and Pictures blog, curated by Gill Stoker, on the Mary Evans Picture Library’s website.

These photos have aged, I’m afraid. The baby in the second one – yes, that’s me.

Many thanks to everybody who invited me to read at their events this year and to everybody who was there: the Faversham Festival in February for my poetry event with Fiona Sinclair; to the wonderful people of SaveAs and DeadHoarse Writers in Canterbury; Clair Meyrick’s exciting new event in Oare with Charlotte Ansell; and Richard Cooper for involving me in his Faversham Fringe event about home with Maggie Harris and Barry Fentiman Hall. Thanks to Richard too for bringing so many of us together in Faversham Guildhall to read the uncompromising, beautiful words of his late wife, Rosemary McLeish. This north Kent poetry community has tremendous energy and warmth and I’m so grateful to be part of it.

On 16 February 2023, I will be reading at Irena Hill’s In-words event in East Greenwich featuring Irish writers whose work has appeared on the Mary Evans Picture Library Poems and Pictures blog, namely Catherine Phil MacCarthy, Eithne Hand, Geraldine Mitchell, Geraldine O’Kane, Linda McKenna, Maureen Boyle, Maurice Devitt and Noel Duffy. What company to be part of! More about this soon.

Three of my poems will be in A New Ulster coming out soon and Off the Map has been accepted by the Mary Evans blog.

Recently Churchill Writers got together again in person, more of us than ever, and it’s been a very happy experience. With the college’s support some writers were there online as well – very many thanks to the staff for all their help. Upcoming dates are here. If you have a connection with Churchill College, Cambridge and would like to join us, let me know. A weekend retreat at the college has been suggested too and we’re looking at a date in June. We’ll have workshops, crit groups, discussions and that energy of writing together in the same space with, I hope, online links too.

It’s time to close the laptop now for a while. However you celebrate this festive holiday, I wish you and yours a warm, healthy and very happy time.

On Wednesday 19 October, 19.30 – 21.30, at Stick Your Oare In! I look forward to being a featured poet at this excellent, new poetry event hosted by my friend, artist and poet Clair Meyrick. There will be an open mic, a bar handy, and the atmosphere of this lovely old pub with famously delicious food. Details below.

The trouble with getting older is that sometimes we don’t get enough time. Before the pandemic, Rosemary McLeish came to read at some events I ran in Whitstable on the north Kent coast and, like everyone else, I fell under the spell of the rich embroidery of her language, her humour and fearless truth. We felt like two retired warhorses who’d wound up in the same corner of the field – we knew we had scars in common without having to say – and I wish we’d had more time to be friends. Rosie contracted cancer and died not long ago and from this Kent coast to Glasgow and beyond, Rosie and her poetry are hugely missed. Her husband Richard reads Rosie’s work on her behalf wherever he can and has organised an event at the Faversham Fringe on Friday 28 October, 8.30 – 9.30pm, in the Sidney Room in the Alexander Centre. I am deeply honoured to be included alongside Maggie Harris and Rosie’s publisher, himself a poet, Barry Fentiman Hall.

Please come – you’ll be in for a treat.

Out of respect for our late Queen, TOMORROW’S SESSION HAS BEEN CANCELLED. We hope to meet online and in person next month.

For the first time in over two years, my Churchill College writing group will be together again in person, with online access available. We will gather over tea and coffee from 3pm, as we did in pre-pandemic days, with the writing session running between 3.30 and around 5.30pm.

If you would like to join us, please drop me a line on rosiejohnstonwrites@gmail.com with a few lines about yourself and your connection with the college so that I can welcome and introduce you. You will find more about how the group works here. It’s as much about friendship as writing and we’ll be very happy to see you.

Throughout the pandemic, we have met about once a month by Zoom and are looking forward very much to this, our first blended, in-person session. We will not return to our old schedule just yet (four Saturdays in college each term) and will combine our monthly Zooms with with one or two meetings in college per term while we feel our way.

Events

On Sunday 11 and Tuesday 13 September, only a fortnight away, I’ll be reading at poetry events in Canterbury and Greenwich, SE10. Please come. Meanwhile I wish everybody a happy time with these last days of summer lotus-eating:

Pack away sandals, sun-honeyed

limbs; autumn’s

here, welcome as wisdom.

(from Bittersweet 17s, Lapwing 2014)

On Sunday 11 September, between 18.30 and 20.30 BST, I’m honoured to be the featured writer at a monthly event run by SaveAs Writers and Dead Hoarse Writers. Before the pandemic, these wonderful events used to be in a pub in the centre of Canterbury. For now, they are (wisely) still on Zoom and you are very welcome to join us.

Since Six-Count Jive was published in 2019, many of my poems have expanded beyond my usual 17-syllables format into longer narratives and I look forward to reading them to you.

There will be a great open mic in excellent company too. I’ll post the link when I have it. See you there!

Irena Hill of In-Words is celebrating her 50th In-Words event with a unique poetry occasion on Tuesday 13 September from 19.00 BST. It will be Irena’s first get-together in person since the pandemic, in her traditional haunt at the beautiful West Greenwich Library in Greenwich, London SE10, and will be online as well.

I’m thrilled to let you know that she has invited me to be in her selection of readers. I’ll join Fiona Moore (shortlisted for the TS Eliot prize in 2019), Colin Pink, Lorraine Mariner, Graham High, Sarah Westcott, Jane McLaughlin, NJ Hynes and Alex Josephy. More detail about us all is here on Irena’s site, on the right as you scroll down.

I’ve been a blow-in all my life and, having lived in Greenwich and moved again recently, will be reading about place and togetherness, including pieces written since Six-Count Jive was published in 2019.

The event is free. Please let Irena know you’re coming so that she can either admit you on Zoom or know how many chairs we’ll need in the library. See you there!