The north Kent coast is buzzing this week, thanks to the magnificent Faversham Literary Festival – programme here – with stars like Simon Armitage and Michael Palin visiting, and Will Self and Sebastian Barry to come. I’ll be there helping – feel free to say hello.
Yes, at 2pm in the Parlour this Saturday I’ll be reading too and I’m just gathering poems to see what works together. There’ll be something new, not read before, most of it from my forthcoming fifth book of poetry Off the Map, scheduled for publication by Lapwing Publications again. Please come!
In these darkest days of the year before spring’s awakening, Faversham Festival brightens us all on the north Kent coast. This year’s schedule has stars ranging from Hollie McNish and Simon Armitage to Michael Palin and Maggie Aderin-Pocock. You’ll find me helping and ushering towards the end of the week and on stage on Saturday 25 February as part of the Poetry Hub.
The Poetry Hub is an amazing event. It expands every year in range and impact and this year’s promises to be more powerful than ever – full details here. Please come and join us if you can.
With dark, chilly weather and a new batch of Covid circling, the news that I have three poems in the latest issue of A New Ulster is enormously cheering. What an excellent magazine ANU is. It’s always a rewarding browse and you can find issue 121 here.
On Thursday 16 February, 2023, 19.30 – 21.30 GMT, Irena Hill of In-Words will host an evening featuring Irish poets who have appeared on Gill Stoker’s marvellous Poems and Pictures blog on the Mary Evans Picture Library’s website. I’m honoured to know both these excellent women. I’ve been a contributor and big fan of Gill’s blog since its early days. Irena was a member of my earliest writing group in Bermondsey in 2011 and we’ve been friends ever since. Very many thanks to them both for inviting me to read alongside Catherine Phil MacCarthy, Eithne Hand, Geraldine Mitchell, Geraldine O’Kane, Linda McKenna, Maureen Boyle, Maurice Devitt and Noel Duffy.
Karli Land of Colorful Crow has asked to quote my blogpost about what we can expect after the glorious day when you finally receive an acceptance. I’m happy and honoured to say yes. You can see Colorful Crow’s website here. Thank you, Karli, for your kind words.
Colorful Crow is a great site – I wish you a happy ramble among its books. I don’t have a picture of colourful crows, I’m afraid, so here are some beach huts instead. Yes, I was up to my middle in the sea with my camera.
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.
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.
Rosie Johnston 