SUSPENDED UNTIL JANUARY – the hosts are away
Sunday 20 November, 7.30pm. £6/£5 cash. Poets from the floor welcome.
Guest poet: Anne Rouse reading from her new book, Ox Eye, published by Bloodaxe.
Anne Rouse’s fifth collection, Ox-Eye, was published by Bloodaxe in 2022, appearing 14 years after her previous book, her retrospective The Upshot: New and Selected Poems. That book included the new poems of The Divided (2008), along with selections from her first three critically acclaimed earlier collections, Sunset Grill (1993) and Timing(1997) – both Poetry Book Society Recommendations – and The School of Night (2004), and was a Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year in 2008. Born in Washington DC and raised in Virginia, she became a UK citizen, settling in East Sussex after many years in London. A former health worker, she has been a Hawthornden Fellow, and a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Glasgow (2000-02), Queen’s University, Belfast (2004-05), and the Courtauld Institute, London (2008). Her short plays have been given rehearsed readings in Edinburgh and Hastings in the UK and in Virginia in the US. You can find her on Twitter @rouseanne.
Sunday November 6th, 7.30pm. – £6/£5 cash according to pocket. Poets from the floor welcome.
As a result of winning the Geoff Stevens Memorial Award, Paul McGrane‘s first collection Elastic Man was published with Indigo Dreams Publishing in 2018. A second collection British People in Hot Weather is out now with Indigo. Paul is the co-founder of the Forest Poets poetry collective in Walthamstow.
Claire Booker is a medical herbalist who lives in a village near Brighton. Her poems have been set to music, filmed, displayed on Guernsey buses and Worthing Pier, and published most recently in The Dark Horse, Magma, Mslexia, Stand and Under the Radar. She has been a Poetry Society Members’ Poem winner three times, runner-up in their Stanza Competition, and twice nominated for the Forward Best Individual Poem. Her collection ‘A Pocketful of Chalk’ is out with Arachne Press. Her pamphlets are ‘The Bone That Sang (Indigo Dreams) and ‘Later There Will Be Postcards (Green Bottle Press).
Every Wednesday 3-5pm
tea, poetry, conversation, singing, conviviality hosted by Agnes Hay, Dan Kennedy, Penny Dimond
Sunday October 30th, 7.30pm. – £6/£5 cash according to pocket. Poets from the floor welcome.
Guest readers: Julian Bishop introduces Vanessa Lampert, Julian Bishop, Heather Moulson, Charlotte Baldwin, Sarah Perillo from the South Kensington Stanza Group
Caroline Maldonado’s Faultlines (Vole Books, 2022) and Adriana Díaz Enciso’s Flint (Contraband Books, 2022)
In this dialogue between two very different books, poets Caroline Maldonado and Adriana Díaz Enciso interweave common threads of grief, loss, and the visible or invisible fault lines that bring about change and commotion —people and places collapse through the force of earthquakes, depression, forced migration or environmental damage. We walk with what is lost and broken in an understanding of poetry as both elegy and celebration.
About the books: Faultlines contains as a central sequence poems exploring the 2016 earthquakes that shook central Italy, with their metaphorical resonances, political, environmental and human.
Flint is an elegy to a stranger prompted by a dream—a dream diary, where the stark reality of suicide is addressed against the backdrop of springtime, interspersed with some musings on catharsis and hero-worship in modern culture.
About the authors:
Caroline Maldonado is a poet and translator living in the UK and central Italy. Her poems have appeared widely in magazines and anthologies and online and have won or been placed in competitions. Her six publications include her own poems in What they say in Avenale (2014 Indigo Dreams) and Faultlines (2022 Vole Books) and Isabella (2019 Smokestack Books) – with her own poems about the life of Isabella Morra, a Renaissance poet killed at 26 in an honour killing, and translation of that poet’s work. Isabella was commended in the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation and was one of The Morning Star’s Best Poetry Collections of 2019. Three other translated books have been published by Smokestack Books, one of which won a PEN Translates award. She chaired Modern Poetry in Translation’s Board of Trustees for seven years.
Adriana Díaz Enciso was born in Mexico and has lived in London since 1999. She has published (in Mexico) several books of poetry, four novels and two collections of short stories. Flint is her first publication in the UK. She’s the author of many lyrics for Mexican rock band Santa Sabina and has written for the stage and TV. Her most recent novel, Ciudad doliente de Dios (Doleful City of God), published in Mexico by Alfaguara and the National Autonomous University of Mexico, is inspired by William Blake’s Prophetic Poems. She has been a trustee for Modern Poetry in Translation. She’s currently working on her fifth novel (written in English) and on the translation of a selection of British poet David Harsent’s work.
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Also Torriano in cyberspace at 6.30. hosted by Joan Michelson.
There is no guest reader at the online event. The live session at Torriano is not broadcast here. Bring poems to read or just listen. Join us there, all welcome. All welcome to read or listen. Free.
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/3940991487?pwd=VXN0djNHU0F5M2pDK0dscXdRTkJwZz09
Meeting ID: 394 099 1487
Passcode: 8dFNdWq
Sunday 9 October, 7.30pm. £6/£5 cash. Poets from the floor welcome.
Sophie Herxheimer is a London based poet and visual artist. Her collection Velkom to Inklandt (Short Books, 2017) was a Poetry Book of the Month in the Observer and a Sunday Times Book of the Year. Her book 60 Lovers to Make and Do, (Henningham Family Press, 2019) was a TLS Book of the Year. She has an ongoing project where she listens and draws stories live with members of the public. Her latest collection is INDEX (zimZalla, 2021), a box of 78 collage poems, made from found text, published in a box as a deck of prophetic cards.
Helen Sheppard is a Bristol-based writer, a twin and has worked as a midwife. Her poetry explores themes of birth, life, family, friendship, health and loss, and those whose voices are often unheard. She started to write in her forties during a ‘kick start your reading’ class. Helen co-runs Satellite of Love Word events and loves the alchemy of being involved in community events with Bristol Literature Festival, Lyra Poetry Festival and she enjoys mentoring new poets. Helen has performed at Milk Poetry, Berkeley Square Review, Mind Matters, That’s What She Said, RTB Spotlight,Torriano Meeting House, Harvard Medical School, Nuyorican Poetry Cafe, Parkside Lounge, Poetry + Health, schools parks and gardens.
……………………………….
Also Torriano in cyberspace at 6.30. hosted by Joan Michelson.
There is no guest reader at the online event. The live session at Torriano is not broadcast here. Bring poems to read or just listen. Join us there, all welcome. All welcome to read or listen. Free.
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/3940991487?pwd=VXN0djNHU0F5M2pDK0dscXdRTkJwZz09
Meeting ID: 394 099 1487
Passcode: 8dFNdWq
Saturday 1 October. Noon to 6.15pm.
Joan Littlewood’s vision of arts and sciences for all.
Big fun, small space, the universe in a grain of sand. In past years we have celebrated the Russian revolution; built a time machine; explored the cutting edge of architecture; there has always been and will always be orange peel sculpting, dramatic interludes, making things, science experiments, important conversations and a tea urn.
Torriano Meeting House 