Join members Antony Johae, Anne Boileau and Kate Foley on the flight paths of their imaginations as they read from their recent collections about Rohmer’s films, the natural world and journeying through life. Reviewers comment respectively: ‘A love letter to Eric Rohmer’ (Chrys Salt), ‘Landscape, seascape, the salt edge of things’ (Pauline Stainer), ‘courage and curiosity’ (RV Bailey). The readings will be followed by a short OPEN MIC on the same theme.

Roger West (a director of the Austin Poetry Festival in Texas)

reads and performs. In Mediterranean countries the song of the cicada heralds the end of winter.  This cycle of poems, set to music and soundscapes and drawing on cultural traditions from Ancient Greek literature to contemporary cinema, follows their song from the gentleness of late spring to the brutality of high summer.

The idea of place is vital to each of these four poets. Oliver Comins, in Oak Fish Island, layers observation and detail, achieving a fine placing of each poem to conjure an entire world. Elastic Glue, by Kathy Pimlott, is concerned with the complexities of place and community in London. In her poems, Alexandra Davis explores specific places in and around Suffolk, and sees relationships as meeting places, while Charlotte Gann turns inner landscapes into places where people move like shadows, meet, and go their separate ways.

As the Mental Health Foundation enters its eighth decade, the need for effective communication about the challenges of maintaining mental health has never been more urgent. In My Darling Derry, Sally Festing explores the ghosts of mental illness in her family, and honours her father who set up the MHF. Peter Wallis is submissions editor of Poems in the Waiting Room (PWR). The poems in Articles of Twinship, explore growing up as an identical twin in the post-war years and his brother’s illness. In Caldbeck, Jenny Pagdin writes on postnatal psychosis – 'and still it rained down, crosshatching the sky'. Helen Calcutt showcases Eighty Four, the new CALM anthology of poems that tackle the experience and impact of male suicide. 

Wild Court online editor Robert Selby introduces and proudly showcases four of the contributors. Based at King’s College London, Wild Court is an online poetry journal that draws upon an international community of poets and critics. Since its founding in 2015, Wild Court has published extended essays on poets living and dead, and poetry from new and established voices.  

wildcourt.co.uk  @wildcourtpoetry

Maria Isakova Bennett launches her special Aldeburgh issue of Coast to Coast to Coast and MW Bewick introduces a new anthology on harbours and ports. With readings from contributors. Port is the latest anthology of poetry and prose from Dunlin Press - @dunlinpress. From fishing villages to container cities, and from dilapidated docks to leisure marinas, ports are palimpsests of changing times – places of arrival and departure where ‘here’ contacts ‘there’. 

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A dive into the world of living myth. Storyteller Martin Shaw will be weaving an eclectic blend of story and poetry together: from trickster stories to wild fairy tales to his recent translations of the poet Lorca. The essential thread between them? that words can be like magic.

Poetastic -- this intriguing and vibrant array of writers selected from the most recent cohort of UEA's acclaimed MA Poetry course present a snapshot of British poetry today, including Helen Akers, Geffen Bankir, Jade Cuttle, Alison Graham, Amanda Holiday, and Poppy Kleiser.  (with wine)