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‘Pale Fire – the Moon in Poetry and Art’ at the New Venture Theatre in Brighton on 29 November 2019

If you missed the launch of Pale Fire – New Writing on the Moon earlier this year, here is your second chance to hear from some of the contributors, at a very special venue.
The Moon has inspired lovers, poets and artists since time began and was in fact our first timekeeper. This year it has been 50 years since humans first set foot on the Moon. Join us for an evening of lunar poetry hosted in collaboration with the The New Venture Theatre in Brighton.

Writer and editor Alexandra Loske will introduce new and classic writing on the Moon, composed, chosen and read by contemporary poets and NVT members.

Poets performing will be: Jeremy Page, Maria Jastrzębska, John O’Donoghue, Chris Sykes, Stephen Plaice, Chris McDermott, Seema Kapila, Claire Booker, Zel Norwood, Neil Gower and Janet Sutherland.

Friday 29th November 7.45pm (doors open at 7pm)
New Venture Theatre
Bedford Place
Brighton
BN1 2PT
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Frogmore Poetry Prize 2019 – winners announced

The 33rd Frogmore Poetry Prize has been awarded to Oxford writer and painter Polly Walshe, for her poem ‘Our District’. Adjudicator John O’Donoghue comments: ‘I have read the poem over and over and find new depths and meaning in it every time. There was no poem quite like ‘Our District’ in the great sheaf of poems I read.’  Polly wins 250 guineas and a two-year subscription to The Frogmore Papers.

Polly Walshe, winner of the 2019 Frogmore Poetry Prize

Runners-up were Michael Swan, for ‘We Refugees’, which ‘brings home to the reader how the legacy of oppression remains, how the feeling of contingency and uncertainty never leaves anyone who has fled war and persecution in lives of great economy and power’, and Robert Hamberger for ‘Sleeping with Uncertainty’, a sonnet exploring the uncertainty those facing a potential cancer diagnosis have to endure.

The other shortlisted poems – by Tony Hendry, Miriam Patrick, David Shields, Ben Strak, Michael Swan (again) and J S Watts – all possess the qualities O’Donoghue was looking for in his choices: ‘originality of voice, facility with the craft of poetry and felicity of expression’.

All poems will be published in the September edition of The Frogmore Papers, available post-free from The Frogmore Press, 21 Mildmay Road, Lewes BN7 1PJ for £5.

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33rd Frogmore Poetry Prize

Poet, journalist and author John O’Donoghue will adjudicate the 33rd Frogmore Poetry Prize, worth 250 guineas, in 2019. John’s memoir Sectioned: A Life Interrupted was Mind Book of the Year Prize in 2010, and his poetry collections include Brunch Poems (Waterloo Press, 2009) and Fools & Mad (Waterloo Press, 2014). He will read all submissions for the Prize. Previous winners include Ann Alexander, Tobias Hill, Mario Petrucci, Caroline Price, Lesley Saunders – and Emily Wills, who has now won on four separate occasions! The deadline for submissions is 31 May 2019 and full details are available at: http://www.frogmorepress.co.uk/frogmore-poetry-prize/submission-details-for-frogmore-poetry-prize-2019/