Monthly Archives: March 2023

On 11th April at 8 pm, Jonathan Edwards will announce the prize winners in our 2023 Open Poetry Competition in an event at the Royal Wells Hotel in Tunbridge Wells. The seven prize winners will read their winning poems either on zoom or live. Following that, Jonathan will treat us to a reading from his own poetry.

Jonathan is a very well-known poet and editor. His first collection, My Family and Other Superheroes (Seren, 2014), received the Costa Poetry Award and the Wales Book of the Year People’s Choice Award. It was shortlisted for the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. His second collection, Gen (Seren, 2018), also received the Wales Book of the Year People’s Choice Award, and in 2019 his poem about Newport Bridge was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. He has read his poems on BBC radio and television, recorded them for the Poetry Archive, and led workshops in schools, universities and prisons. He has been a judge for the National Poetry Competition and the Wales Book of the Year, a Literature Wales mentor of emerging writers, and a Gladstone’s Library writer-in-residence. He lives in Crosskeys, South Wales.

The event is open to non-members of the Society for a mere £3 on the door. Do come along!

Our next event is an evening of poetry with Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana at the Royal Wells Hotel in Tunbridge Wells: 8 pm on 21st March.

Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana has an MA in Writing Poetry from Newcastle University and an MA in Japanese Language from Sheffield University. She teaches creative writing and is module leader for the International Foundation programme in Humanities, at Newcastle University. Her most recent work appeared in PN Review, The Moth, Poetry Wales, Fenland Poetry Journal, Tears in the Fence and The Alchemy Spoon. Online her poems can be read in Anthropocene, The High Window and London Grip.

She came third in the 2020 Oxford Brookes International Poetry competition, has been shortlisted for the Winchester and Troubadour prizes, and had two poems shortlisted by Billy Collins, for the 2022 Fish Prize. She read at the 2021 Aldeburgh festival, alongside Wendy Cope and at the 2022 Oxford Think Human festival, with Mary Jean Chan. She was also a featured poet at the 2022 Tears in the Fence festival, and has performed internationally, in Portland, Oregon, at the American Writer’s Program conference. Her debut collection, Sing me down from the dark, is published by SALT.

Alexandra will read her poetry after our usual Open Mic spot, when members (and visitors who wish to join us for a £3 entry fee) can volunteer to read or recite one of their own poems (max 40 lines, please).