Such a fabulous celebration at The Poetry Café yesterday and what great readings from all! Huge thanks go to Cheryl Pearson and Sarah Doyle – “the bridesmaids” as Sarah described them! It is such a joy to hear your new poets read their work and celebrate their new books with them. Congratulations Claire!! Thanks everyone who came to support.
Sarah Doyle, Claire Walker and Cheryl Pearson
Also fabulous to see Jane Lovell and meet a couple of our 2020 poets, Olga Dermott-Bond and Denise Bundred.
Come and join us for the launch of Against the Grain’s wonderful poet Claire Walker.
Claire is a poet, writer and editor based in Worcestershire. She is the author of two poetry pamphlets, The Girl Who Grew Into a Crocodile (2015), and Somewhere Between Rose and Black (2017), both published by V. Press. Somewhere Between Rose and Black was shortlisted for Best Poetry Pamphlet in the 2018 Saboteur Awards. She is Co-Editor, with Holly Magill, of Atrium webzine.
Join us and guest readers Cheryl Pearson and Sarah Doyle.
“Claire Walker’s subtle and confident poems display a lightness of touch. Fine technique has resulted in work that is both supple and robust. Images of water predominate, its power and inhabitants serving as metaphors for permanence and impermanence and the shift of human experience. Walker reflects on connections and collisions between land and sea, female and male, childhood and adulthood, myth and nature. Compelling to read, each of these pieces is concise and delicate yet strong enough to elegantly support themes of emotional weight.” Roy Marshall
“An enchanting and lushly lyrical pamphlet full of startling images and mesmeric narratives. In poems that wash over you like a warm tide, Claire creates an immersive and compelling world, part magic realist, part poignantly recognisable. These are perfectly honed, imagistic poems full of a language that dances on the page and lines that sing in your head long after you have put the book down.” Anna Saunders
Excellent review by Jon Squirrel at Mad Hatter Reviews “Well, as its title would suggest, goes deep.” See Mad Hatter Reviews.
We are delighted with Olga’s win and to be publishing her in 2020!! Super big congratulations. We’ve stolen a bit of text from The Poetry Society page and you can read it in full here:
The winners of the BBC Proms Poetry Competition 2019, for poems written in response to a piece of music in the 2019 Proms season, have been announced. This year’s competition was judged by poet and presenter of The Verb on BBC Radio 3 Ian McMillan, acclaimed poet Malika Booker and the Director of The Poetry Society Judith Palmer. The winners were announced at an event which was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 12 September 2019. All six winners and runners-up had the chance to hear their poems read by the great actress and poetry lover Adjoa Andoh. You can listen to the programme on BBC Sounds.
Congratulations to Olga Dermott-Bond, the winner of the 19+ category with her poem ‘Poyekhali! (Let’s Go!)’, inspired by Public Service Broadcasting’s ‘Gagarin’. Olga was a runner-up in last year’s competition with her poem ‘Bwbachod’s lament’. We also congratulate runners-up Rachel Burns for her poem ‘St Petersburg’ and Natalie Linh Bolderston for her poem ‘The River’.
Congratulations too to Young Poets Networker Katie Kirkpatrick, who won the 12-18 age category with her poem ‘one man band (gagarin plays the saxaphone)’, also inspired by Public Service Broadcasting’s ‘Gagarin’; and runners-up Joyce Chen for her poem ‘Muse’ and Renée Orleans-Lindsay for her poem ‘Bohemia’.
Natalie Shaw is one of four poets whose pamphlets we’re excited to be publishing next year. Natalie 
started writing poetry in 2014 after discovering that she didn’t need special permission or a secret key to a secret garden. She spent a very exciting year as part of Jo Bell’s online group 52 and since then has had her work published in a variety of journals and anthologies. She has just finished editing Medusa and Her Sisters, a book of sonnets inspired by a series of drawings by artist Natalie Sirett. This year she was commended in the National Poetry Competition. Oh be quiet is her first pamphlet.
What made you decide to submit your pamphlet to Against the Grain Press?
I’ve been impressed by lots of things about Against the Grain. I’ve read some incredible work from its poets, and I’ve noticed that even as a small press, it has a really fantastic reach.
Could you give us an idea of the general theme of your pamphlet?
The poems in this pamphlet explore several different small moments of realisation. They sometimes take place at a threshold moment, when someone is crossing from one state to another.
Things that I say to my enemy
While my enemy sleeps, I stand outside her house.
I send beetles into her dreams, a cockroach, a man
who hates her, someone running, the sly but persistent
notion her friends are only pretending to listen.
While my enemy sleeps, I turn others against her. I mention
things she has said that sound unpleasant, I kick
her leg while no one is watching. I let her see
letters from others in which she barely features.
I ask her a question I know she can’t answer, I snub her
at parties, I steal her ideas; I pretend I can’t hear her,
I say she looks lovely then laugh at her dress. I delight
in the shadows that lengthen under her eyes, and note
with glee that her hair is quite greasy but mostly I shiver
to think of her lying awake and alone. I whisper
it’s true that she’ll never have boyfriends, a wedding, or babies
with soft little hands, her milk in their soft little mouths.
Eleven days
I was on Wikipedia looking for something
and I found eleven missing days, imagine.
I spent a couple as a man
in his early thirties. I had a convertible,
I wore sunglasses. I parked wherever I wanted.
I had fun like people in adverts have fun, Lynx for example.
Then I went back to the stately home we visited
and had tea on the lawn. I was
Isabel Archer at the beginning of
Portrait of a Lady, except this time
I knew to avoid the grand European Tour
and instead I stayed at home
and practised the pieces
that normally I don’t have time to.
Now I can play them all really well.
I learnt how to cha cha cha too,
all those dances we were going to dance together
but never got round to, you’ll be amazed
when you see me. It went really quickly,
on the whole. All those beautiful, empty minutes
to spend in the sun, drinking espressos
and eating ice creams in Venice, Siena. I’m sure
any one of you would’ve done the same,
but I found them first and I’m sorry, they’re gone.
Against the Grain Poetry Press 