‘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!
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
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
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.
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…
We’re in the final proof checks of ‘Safe Ground’, well on course for publication by Mica Press on 25 March, 2025. This stage is indescribably exciting and I can’t wait to hold a copy in my hand.
Meanwhile there’s the Faversham Literary Festival to look forward to. I’m hosting the Poetry Hub this Saturday 22 February and notice that everything is sold out! I am scheduled to read in Faversham Guildhall at 5.30pm with Michael Bartholomew-Biggs (an excellent poet who has edited new poetry and poetry reviews at London Grip for many years) and Maggie Harris, a Guyanese poet and prose writer living in Thanet, who was awarded the Guyana Prize for Literature in 2000 and 2014 for her collections of poetry Limbolands and Sixty Years of Loving, respectively.
All three of us have new poems and old favourites to read to you.
My latest review for London Grip was a pleasure to write. I love the coast and to spend time with Moore’s descriptions of her time in the Outer Hebrides was exquisite.
Whether your New Year’s Resolutions were about writing, or whether (like me) you don’t reckon with them at all, this can be an excellent time for flexing your fictional muscles again after the festivities.
When I was little, my dad used to read to me at bedtime and a big favourite was The Wind in the Willows. Through furry creatures who live by and near a river, the book has huge things to say about our inner spirit and what everybody needs to thrive. One of the most important of course is food, so these characters have gorgeous picnics and ad hoc meals where the main ingredient is their wonderful friendship. Ratty (a water vole) is passionate about boating too. Feel free to use any of the following quotes as a prompt for five or ten minutes of writing, or as long as the spirit takes you:
‘And you really live by the river? [said Mole} What a jolly life!’ ‘By it and with it and on it and in it,’ said the Rat. ‘It’s brother and sister to me, and aunts, and company, and food and drink, and (naturally) washing. It’s my world…’ The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
‘They had now entered a beautiful walk by the side of the water, and every step was bringing forward a nobler fall of ground, or a finer reach of the woods to which they were approaching; but it was some time before Elizabeth was sensible of any of it.’ Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
‘The minuet set Jack’s head wagging with its insistent beat, but he was wholly unconscious of it; and when he felt his hand stirring on his breeches and threatening to take to the air he thrust it under the crook of his knee.’ Master and Commander, Patrick O’Brian
Most stories are quests within a framework of work or love in one form or another, with techniques to escalate the stakes to a satisfying finish. Hobbies can be a side-issue, something to broaden a character’s appeal, or they can be at the heart of the story. If the second, the trick is to fold them in, from the start, so that the hobby itself rapidly becomes a matter of life & death. The British film Brassed Off is a perfect template. The UK’s coal mining industry was being closed down. Many pits had brass bands to help the miners’ breathing and morale, and the band in the film has been spectacularly successful. Two questions interweave: can the band survive closure of the pit, and can the miners themselves survive without work?
More prompts, from books about pastimes:
‘Every instrument employed was severely commented upon; but when he came to the wind, his indignation was terrible.’ Talks with Bandsmen by Algernon Rose, 1894
‘If you landed on a comet, you’d need to keep an eye on its orbit.’ Am I made of Stardust? Maggie Aderin-Pocock
‘Gardeners are born optimists, always looking forward to the year ahead, convinced that they will achieve much more than in the previous year.’ RHS Gardening through the Year by Ian Spence
Or you could sit down with one of your characters for a character chat and ask (writing down the answers as they flow) about their favourite fun things to do. When do they do them? Where? With whom? What are the contexts (teams, times of year etc.)? Is kit involved? Who organises, hosts, starts it all off? The character?(Why/ why not?) How does the character feel about it all? What do they hope for/ want? How’s it going? Why?
Wherever you are, wherever you’re writing, I wish you the very best in 2025 and beyond, and happy writing!
Food is essential to a healthy balanced life, we’re told. I’d say it can be a vital part of balanced writing too and I don’t just mean those favourite biscuits you keep handy while you type.
Can you think of scenes in something you’ve read or seen that stick with you more because of the food in them? I don’t just mean the Royale with cheese in Pulp Fiction (one of the film’s most memorable scenes though it plays no part in moving the story forward). For me, favourites run from The Wind in the Willows (Ratty’s wicker ‘luncheon basket’ opens up to all sorts of beautiful meals in that lovely book) to A Christmas Carol where Scrooge needs a lesson in how food and generosity can bring us all together, and Chocolat where the stranger in town opens a chocolate shop and upsets the community balance in all sorts of delicious ways. This treat (wonderfully named ‘The Passionate Epicure’, written exactly 100 years ago) came up in our writing group chat on Saturday – thank you, Kate!
Food in a story reveals depths in our characters as well as anchoring us with them in their reality.
Here are some prompts I’ve lifted at random from recipe books:
Cordon Bleu Cookery, 1976 (given to me by my mother): ‘Hot souffles are often considered to be the test of a good cook. They are not difficult to make if you follow the basic rules.’ Those lines always makes me laugh as I’ve never baked a good one and can’t be bothered now to try.
Pasta by Carla Bardi, 2010: ‘Warm the yoghurt in a small saucepan over low heat. Add the garlic, chopped kiwi fruit, and lemon zest. Season with salt and pepper.’ Proving you really can put anything with pasta.
Michel Roux, The French Revolution, 2018: ‘Roll out the pastry to a circle about 3cms wider than the pan. Place this on top of the figs, tucking the excess pastry around them.’ Yum.
The prompts below come from Like Water For Chocolate by Laura Esquivel, 1989:
The news seemed to move the Captain. In a barely audible voice, he replied, ‘That is a pity, a very great pity.’
The steam rising from the pan mingled with the heat given off by Tita’s body. The anger she felt within her acted like yeast on bread dough.
‘Look, it would be better if we didn’t dig up the past; I don’t care what Pedro’s motives were in marrying me. the fact is he did.’
More thoughts are below for a foodie brainstorm with your main characters. Food can arrive by bike via an app, in a packet or from a hob delivered by a kind neighbour in a crisis, whatever comes to mind. Ask your character to tell you in the usual character chat way, explained here –
About their favourite meals: what do they like to eat/ when/ where/ with whom/ in any particular contexts?
Who makes or provides this favourite food? Why? You, the character, or another character in the story? Why or why not?
Ask about food shopping: what/ where/ how/ when etc. Do they enjoy it? Loathe it? Why?
And so on. This kind of discovery can go on as long as you like. It limbers up your writing muscle, invites your characters back into your imagination after a break, and might even lead to you writing something that can go straight into your book. Even if it doesn’t quite do that last one, it might next time. Happy writing!
Mica Press has scheduled Safe Ground, my fifth book of poetry, for publication on 25 March, 2025!
On the same day Mica Press and Irena Hill of In-words will launch Safe Ground and Michael Vince’s Legwork at West Greenwich Library in south east London. Mica writers Michael Foley, Nayma Chamchoun and Leslie Bell (Mr Mica himself) will join us to read too. You can find more about them on Mica’s website here. Irena’s poetry events are renowned for their wonderful atmosphere and her home-baked polenta cake and everyone will be welcome.
Safe Ground traces my search for safety from the Causeway Coast and Troubles Belfast to peace and a sense of home near Margate Sands where TS Eliot wrote part of The Waste Land. The shore is a significant healer in the poems and North Sea winds gust through them. I will be enormously proud to be a Mica poet, and hope you can come to celebrate with us and enjoy the depth and scale of Mica’s work. Here I am by the Mourne Wall a long time ago…
Rosie Johnston 