June Meeting – Jacqueline Saphra and Open Mic
Our June meeting is as usual upstairs that the Vittle & Swig on Camden Road, Tunbridge Wells, on Tuesday 19th June at 8pm. We will have an open mic followed by a reading from Jaqueline Saphra.
Jacquline describes herself as a poet, editor, agitator, teacher, organiser and word-enthusiast, but not necessarily in that order. She is increasingly interested in genre-bending. You’ll find poems, prose poems and proems in her most recent collection. She’s also an enthusiastic collaborator, working with composers, musicians and visual artists. She has collaborated on her book of prose poems, If I lay On My Back I saw Nothing but Naked Women with the illustrator, Mark Andrew Webber, and it has specially composed music by Benjamin Tassie to accompany the poems in performance. It won the Best Collaborative Work in the Saboteur Awards 2015.
SheJacqueline was Poet in Residence for Good Housekeeping and a board member for Magma Poetry. She provides mentoring and also teaches poetry in all kinds of settings including work for the Poetry School.
Her latest collection, All My Mad Mothers was published by Nine Arches Press in 2017 and was shortlisted for the T.S.Eliot prize. You can hear her reading some of the poems at the T.S.Eliot event on this You Tube extract, from about 4 minutes in.
July Meeting – Outdoor Poetry
Our July meeting will be our annual outdoor meeting. This year we are holding it in a very special place – the ‘Enchanted Place’ Winnie the Pooh memorial in the Ashdown Forest – a place where Christopher Milne had been with his nanny and his father, A.A.Milne, inspiring the end of House at Pooh Corner “They walked on, thinking of This and That, and by-and-by they came to an enchanted place on top of the Forest “.
The annual outdoor meeting is an occasion when we bring our favourite poems by other authors to share around a theme. This year, in fitting with the A.A.Milne location, the theme is ‘Lost/Childhood/Innocence’ – so please all bring along a few poems to read closely or loosely connected to that theme.
Directions to the ‘Enchanted Place’ Winnie the Pooh memorial:
– take the B2110 from Tunbridge Wells, through Groombridge, to Hartfield.
– drive through the village, then fork left on B2026 towards Uckfield
– up the hill onto the Forest and park at Gills Lap car park.
– arrive at 7.45pm and we’ll walk the short distance to Gills Lap
If wet we repair to the Hatch Inn, Coleman’s Hatch, TN7 4EJ:
– through Hartfield, stay on B2110.
– At Coleman’s Hatch, immediately past sign, turn left towards Wych Cross
– Take left fork in road. The pub is on the right
The Kent & Sussex Poetry Society 