Cherry Potts, Writer

Category: poetry

  • Lewisham Library taken over by Lesbians…

    Here are some photos from Thursday’s LGBT History Month event at Lewisham Library, featuring me, Kate Foley, V.A. Fearon and V.G. Lee. I really wanted to photograph the lovely audience too, but had too many other things on my mind. But imagine a library stuffed full of women, plus a couple of men, and a…

  • LGBT History event Lewisham Library TONIGHT

    Thrilled to be doing so many readings for LGBT History month – you must have noticed I’m keen on history? The first one is tonight, at Lewisham Library 199-201 Lewisham High Street, SE13 6LG 7.45 for 8. Kate Foley (Poet) has arrived from the Netherlands and is even now upstairs practising, after an entertaining evening…

  • The Historical Birthday-Tea Party 22nd January

    Once more, dear friends, there is no one specific for whom to bake a cake. Therefore, I delve again into the seventeenth century in search of someone to celebrate: Please give a warm welcome to Margaret Lucas Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle 1623 – 15 December 1673. Mad Madge, as she was known to people emphatically…

  • The Historical Birthday-Tea Party 17th January

    I’ve not found anyone with the 17th as their birthday, so another of my 16th Century muses. Catherine Cooke Killigrew 1530-1583. ‘A learned lady’ proficient in several languages, and a poet. There’s not much information on Catherine, apart from her father Anthony Cooke and husband Henry Killigrew, and that she died in childbirth. Apparently Bathsua Makin…

  • The Historical Birthday-Tea Party 9th January

    January 9th – Simone de Beauvoir‘s birthday, but she’s not invited to the party. Sometimes you know too much about a person to find them appealing. Instead, let’s have Aisha bint Ahmed al-Qurtubiyya I’ve no idea when her birthday is, as she was born in Córdoba, Spain in 965 and died in either 999 or…

  • The Historical Birthday-Tea Party 5th January

    No convenient birthday for 5th January so the first of the ‘who knows?’ BIERIS (Biatritz) DE ROMANS Thirteenth Century Trobairitz (Female Troubadour – writer of songs) from Romans-Sur-Isère. Writing from around 1200-1235. Probably nobility since she could read and write. The tune does not survive.  During and following the Albigensian Crusade, troubadours were treated with…

  • The Historical Birthday-Tea Party January 4th

    The matchless Orinda – Katherine Phillips. Her birthday is actually 1st January 1631 but she deserved a really class party so I’ve waited til now. She was also known as the English Sappho. (So were lots of women poets, it didn’t mean what we think it would mean now, just that she was a poet,…

  • Towersey countdown #SpreadtheWordThree

    So, here’s the plan: Myself and two other hand chosen operatives will infiltrate the festival that has been held in Towersey, a small Oxfordshire village for years and years, and turn what has until now been a folk music event into a celebration of the spoken word.  Watches have been synchronised, and train timetables perused. …

  • Keats Festival 2013 opens

    Today is the first full day of the Keats Festival, which is held at Keats House, Keats Grove, Hampstead. I spent yesterday evening at the launch event, listening to the poetry of Jay Bernard (Demon’s in Hell go on strike, in the most visceral meaty bit of poetry I’ve heard in a long time, very…