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TODAY: Songs of Protest at Brockley Max
Vocal Chords are reprising our Songs of Protest repertoire for Brockley MAX Festival today, Sunday 4th June at 3.30. St Hilda’s Church, Courtrai Road SE23 1PL We are joined by Carrie Cohen & Silas Hawkins who will read poems from Arachne Press’ Liberty Tales anthology. £7 on the door (proceeds to Wheels for Wellbeing)…
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The Thirty Second Mariner
And… the poem is published. you can read it here, and even rate it. Spilling Cocoa is rapidly getting stuffed with witty and daft poems, go and have a browse.
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my first ever poem is about to be published
Well, that isn’t actually true. I’ve written loads of poems, but I’ve just had one accepted for publication for the first time ever. Anyway its very short and a bit silly, but it works – it’s a ‘proper’ poem with a recognisable form. I love writing free poetry but there’s a different kind of satisfaction…
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readings this week
Busy week again, singing Monday (Vocal Chords mid-project ‘stop-over’ concert) and Sunday (rehearsing Brundibar at Blackheath – more on this later), teaching Tuesday, reading Saturday. So the readings are: Saturday: Arachne Press event at Keats House – readings from The Other Side of Sleep, and discussion of Narrative Poetry. I’m not reading personally apart form…
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The Historical Birthday-Tea Party March 1st
A new month, but no birthday to celebrate. I’ll have run out of people whose dates I haven’t found soon and then where will I be? Ok, never mind. Today we are composing birthday odes for Emilia Bassano Lanier aka Aemelia Lanyer 1569–1645 Emilia was Jewish, the illegitimate daughter of Venetian musician Baptista Bassano and…
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The Historical Birthday-Tea Party 22nd February
Today’s birthday girl is Edna St. Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 – October 19, 1950) also known as Nancy Boyd when writing prose, and who called herself ‘Vincent’. Vincent was an American poet and playwright in 1923 she became the third woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, her first poems were published when…
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Sense, Sentences and Sensibility – building poems from scratch
I’m running a poetry workshop on Friday. I keep quiet about poetry most of the time, but the opportunity came up (through Spread the Word), and I’ve been flexing my poetry muscles at the Poetry Cafe’s Poetry@3, Poetry at Mr Lawrence’s and the Towersey Festival recently, so here I go! I’ll be exploring how poems…
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The Historical Birthday-Tea Party 11th February
Karoline von Günderode 11 February 1780 – 26 July 1806 romantic poet, her works often had strong heroic women in the central role, and was critical of traditional gender attitudes. I have to say she behaved a bit like an opera heroine, and this doesn’t strike me as entirely a good thing – Jane Austen…
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The Historical Birthday-Tea Party 9th February
Amy Lowell February 9, 1874 – May 12, 1925 the embodiment of the new liberated woman, … unlimited faith in her own capability God made me a business woman, and I made myself a poet Towards the end of her short life Amy had a relationship with Ada Dwyer Russell, and wrote several poems for…
Cherry Potts, Writer 