Our next monthly meeting is at 8 pm on March 18th, at the Royal Wells Hotel in Tunbridge Wells. (Free to Society members, £3 – in cash please – at the door, to others.)
Guest poet Rachel Spence will read her poems after a short Open Mic. Rachel’s latest book is Daughter of the Sun (Emma Press, 2025).
Split into two parts, a sonnet sequence recounts Spence’s time reconnecting with her estranged mother – caring for her through illness and grieving her passing – before a bold rewriting of the myths around Medea reimagines her not as a murderous witch but a child-free scientist ahead of her time.
With the power and salve of the natural world always close by, Daughter of the Sun contends with being a mother and a daughter, and also what it means to liberate ourselves of those identities and write our own myths full of freedom and possibility.
Rachel Spence lives in London, Ludlow and Venice. Her poems explore themes including time, absence, motherhood and water. She has published three pamphlets: ‘Furies’ (Templar, 2016), ‘Call & Response’ (Emma Press, 2020), and ‘Uncalendared’ (Coast to Coast to Coast Journal Winner, 2023). Her debut collection ‘Bird of Sorrow’ (Templar, 2018) was highly commended in the 2019 Forward Prize. Her prose poem ‘Venice Unclocked’, in collaboration with photographer Giacomo Cosua, was published by Ivory Press in 2022. Her poetry has appeared widely, including in PN Review, The North, The London Magazine, 14 magazine, Tears in the Fence, and on BBC’s The Verb. Her non-fiction book ‘Battle for the Museum’, which explores the relationship between art, power and money, was published by Hurst in 2024.
The Kent & Sussex Poetry Society 