Monthly Archives: May 2014

       John Greening

John Greening entertained us on May 20 at the Camden Centre.  In addition to reading from his own poetry, he announced the Folio poets for this year’s collection, and the winner this year is our chairman, Clive Eastwood, so congratulations to him.  John has also given very helpful feedback to all entrants to the competition.  He believes that all good poetry emerges from reading, and enjoys “listening” to a poem first, to feel its music.  He also enjoys the interplay between line breaks and syntax, and “unusual diction” which nonetheless emerges naturally.

     Clive Eastwood

The Keith Francis Bowl is Clive’s for the year 2014-2015.

The Folio will be available in July, at a cost of £3, and will also contain the prizewinning poems from our Open Competition, and Pascale Petit’s adjudication report.

 John Greening is our guest on Tuesday, May 20th.  He will be reading from his own poetry as well as bringing the results of our 2014 Folio competition.

The Folio is a showcase for work produced by Kent & Sussex members during the past year, as well as containing poems written by our prizewinners in the Open Competition, and the adjudication report by Pascale Petit, so it is certainly a good read:  Folio 65 was one of the Guardian newspaper’s “books of the year” in 2011, and described as “poetry worthy of any list, and deserving of a wider audience” by Chris Davis of Oxford, who nominated it.  Why not buy a copy for yourself, and send copies as gifts for birthdays and Christmas?  It costs only £3 per copy and will be available in July 2014 – watch this space!

As always, none of the entrants in the Folio competition knows which poems John Greening has selected until this month’s meeting, so that always gives it an edge.

John Greening’s  work in poetry and prose is wide-ranging. He has worked in Egypt , in Scotland with Vietnamese boat people and is currently involved with a project involving Iceland during the Second World War. He has received many prizes, and is author of a dozen collections of poetry as well as critical writing and plays.  In this important anniversary of the First World War, John has produced a timely selection of poems entitled “To the War Poets”, including well-known German poets, as well as British. It was published by Carcanet in 2013.

Come and join us at the Camden Centre, Tunbridge Wells, beginning at 8pm. , for what promises to be a varied and interesting evening!