Paul McGrane

NB CHANGE OF VENUE THIS MONTH

This month  we have pleasure in welcoming Paul McGrane.  For this month only, the event will take place in the upstairs room of The Rendezvous on Camden Road. The evening begins with a very brief AGM at 8.00, followed by Paul’s reading.

Paul McGrane is the co-founder of the Forest Poets poetry collective in Walthamstow and has also been The Poetry Society’s Membership Manager since 2006.  He runs the Poetry@3 open mic at the Poetry Café, London, on the first Thursday of the month.  In 2016 he was Highly Commended in the YorkMix Poetry Competition and Longlisted in the South Bank Poetry Competition.

  Image by Caroline Forbes

George Szirtes was born in Hungary and emigrated to England with his parents—survivors of concentration and labour camps—after the 1956 Budapest uprising. His first book, The Slant Door (1979), won the Faber Memorial Prize. Bridge Passages (1991) was shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Prize. Reel (2004) won the T.S. Eliot Prize, and his New and Collected Poems was published by Bloodaxe in 2008. He has also translated, edited, and anthologised numerous collections of Hungarian poetry. For his translation work Szirtes has won several awards, including the Dery Prize for Imre Madach’s The Tragedy of Man (1989) and the European Poetry Translation Prize for Zsuzsa Rakovsky’s New Life (1994).

There will be an Open Mic session first – one poem each for everyone who wants to read.  It’s always a pleasure to hear new voices!

We start off our autumn season of poetry with a visit from Herefordshire writer Raine Geoghegan, who draws on her Romany heritage in her poetry, monologues, prose and songs.  Raine has mixed Welsh and Gypsy Roma heritage and shares her love of the Bishops Frome area and the many memories that the place and hop-picking   evoke.

Our annual competition is now open for entries. The adjudicator this year is the renowned poet, Ruth O’Callaghan. Click on the tab above for details.

This month’s meeting on July 17th. is at The Enchanted Place, by the Winnie the Pooh memorial, at 7.45 pm.

The theme is childhood innocence, or the loss of it – bring along a favourite poem or 2 by a favourite poet, related to the theme, to share with other members.

There is an 8-minute walk from the Gill’s Lap car park to the memorial, or you can take a shorter, less scenic path from Piglet’s CP, taking the path to the Right of the seat, then R onto the main path (2 mins.)  The meeting will start by the memorial, when we have all gathered there.

If you are driving, take
theB2110 from Tunbridge Wells, through Groombridge, then through Hartfield
Fork Left onto the B2026 towards Uckfield, driving up the hill onto the forest

Park at Gill’s Lap or Piglet’s CarPark

See you then!

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.

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