New Lines | Old Maps - 16 November, Oxford

Roam cover image courtesy Éireann Lorsung

New Lines | Old Maps

Four writers read poems of maps, migrations and place: Nancy Campbell, Laressa Dickey, Carola Luther and Carol Rowntree Jones. 

Albion Beatnik Book Store, 34 Walton St, Oxford
Wednesday 16 November 2016
19:00, £2 entry, paid bar.

Nancy Campbell is a writer and book artist. Her poetry collection Disko Bay (Enitharmon Press, 2015) is shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Other books include How To Say ‘I Love You’ In Greenlandic: An Arctic Alphabet which won the Birgit Skiöld Award; a new edition by MIEL books will be launched at this event.

Laressa Dickey is a writer based in Berlin. She’s the author of several chapbooks including A Piece of Information About His Invisibility and apparatus for manufacturing sunset, and the poetry collection Bottomland (Shearsman). Two books are forthcoming: Roam (Shearsman) in 2016, and Twang (Backwaters Press) in 2017. Laressa will launch Roam at this event.

Carola Luther’s first poetry collection, Walking the Animals (Carcanet Press) was shortlisted in 2004 for the Forward Prize for First Collection. Her second collection Arguing with Malarchy was published by Carcanet Press in 2011. Carola was Poet in Residence at the Wordsworth Trust in 2012. Herd was published by The Wordsworth Trust in that same year. Carola now lives in West Yorkshire and works as a counsellor.

Carol Rowntree Jones’ work has been published in The North, Assent, Staple and 111O. She won the inaugural Overton Poetry Prize with her chapbook This Is Not Normal Behaviour and has a chapbook out with Dancing Girl Press in the US. As well as poetry, she writes essays and short fiction and was one of winners of the Asham Award for women’s short fiction in 2013, the award anthology being published by Virago. She runs Nottingham Poetry Series and teaches creative writing and poetry workshops.

Poets, clockwise from top right: 

Carola Luther, Carol Rowntree Jones, Laressa Dickey (by Dina Debbas) and Nancy Campbell (by Tom D. Jones)

Disko Bay - news and reviews

• Recently The Poetry School invited me to write a guest post for their blog about a poem from Disko Bay, describing how it moved from first drafts to publication. My account of the writing process behind 'The Survivors' can be read here.

Some reviews of Disko Bay have been published in the last few weeks. Here's a selection:

• Theophilus Kwek considers the book in a round-up of titles nominated for the Forward Prizes (Felix Dennis Prize for First Collection) in The London Magazine: 'spare, supple lines serve as indispensable guides in the unfamiliar visual and mythic landscape'. (Read the full review here)

• Martyn Crucefix reviews my collection for his excellent poetry blog (well worth following for his forthcoming reviews of other books on the shortlist): 'eco-poetry without shed loads of landscape description'. (Read the full review here)

Many thanks to both poets for the time they have taken to read and respond to my work.

Disko Bay shortlisted...

I'm delighted that Disko Bay has been shortlisted for the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection.

The Forward Prizes were set up in 1992, and have been celebrating excellence in poetry ever since. It's an honour to see Disko Bay on this year's shortlist alongside poems and collections by writers I have admired since I started writing myself. A few names on the shortlist are new to me - but not for long, as I bought up all the available titles (some have not yet been published) in Blackwells this afternoon.

The Guardian has a good survey of the shortlist. It reports William Seighart, founder of the Forward Prizes, saying: 'What we think of as English is expanding all the time - and these poets are on the frontline of change, making homes for new words and dialects, contributing their acuteness of expression, their powers of noticing, to the endless redrafting of the language.' 

The award ceremony (billed as 'the poetry event of the year') is on 20 September 2016 at the Royal Festival Hall, London. Tickets available here.

Book launch

Disko Bay

Copies of Disko Bay can now be reserved on the publisher's website: http://www.enitharmon.co.uk/pages/store/products/ec_view.asp?PID=728

Some advance reviews:

‘Disko Bay is a beautiful debut from a deft, dangerous and dazzling new poet writing from the furthest reaches of both history and climate change.’ – Carol Ann Duffy

‘Nancy Campbell crafts severe, beautiful founding myths which merge fragments of story with song in a poetry which has refreshingly sharp edges. Strong women and talented male hunters there are, but all are vulnerable before human caprice and this lyrically evoked world of ice.’ – Richard Price

Disko Bay will be available from November. The launch event will be on Tuesday 1 December at the Enitharmon Press premises in Bloomsbury. Please contact Lavinia Singer on info@enitharmon.co.uk to reserve your place.

Disko Bay

I'm delighted to announce that my debut poetry collection, Disko Bay, will be published by Enitharmon Press in November.

The poems in Disko Bay are drawn from my experiences during a residency at Upernavik Museum, Greenland in winter 2010, and subsequent research and travel in the Arctic. The book is now in production: this week I returned the proofs (above) to the publisher. I hope this is the last time in my life I have to proofread Greenlandic!

 Here's a sample poem, as published in the current issue of The Interpreter's House:

I'm offering pre-order copies of the book (and extras including invites to the book launch party in London) as rewards for pledges to my current Kickstarter campaign: for more details see the campaign page.