In members’ news, Jess Mookherjee has been asked to judge the poetry competition run by the Hastings Book Festival this summer, and will teach an Arvon Poetry Course next winter. Her debut collection Flood (Cultured Llama, 2018) has been selected for reissue by Nine Arches Press in a few months’ time.
Meanwhile several society members – Charlie Bell, Christopher Rock, Clare Marsh, John Arnold, Graham Mummery, Margaret Beston, Martin Cordrey and Sarah Salway – were included in an anthology Ripple, Poems from the Darent Valley – produced by Lullingstone Country Park, and had lines from their poems ‘sampled’ on a new ripple-effect bench by James Tunnard, installed in the Park. The sculpture was commissioned by Kent Downs National Landscape Association. It also serves as a bench to view the area around the park’s Orchid Bank and is mainly made of oak from a fallen tree. Graham and Charlie also led a poetry workshop for pupils from Shoreham Village School and St John’s C of E Primary School, Sevenoaks. The pupils from both schools had poems included in the anthology. The installation was launched at the Country Park on 21st June, amid poetry readings from pupils and some of the other poets. (Photographs: Graham Mummery).
The Kent & Sussex Poetry Society 