We are delighted to invite Annie Fisher to our next Zoom guest reading event. (Please see joining details in panel on left, or below if viewing on a phone).

Annie’s background has been in primary education, initially as a teacher and later as an English adviser. Now semi-retired, she writes poetry for both adults and children. Her writing draws on her classroom experiences, her love of song and story, and memories of her Catholic childhood. A combination of the playful and the poignant often bubbles under the surface.
Annie joined Taunton’s Fire River Poets in 2012 after winning a prize in their annual competition. 
She has been widely published in poetry magazines and has had two pamphlets published by Happenstance Press:  Infinite In All Perfections (2016) and The Deal (2020)     ‘In a manner reminiscent of Philip Larkin and Selima Hill, Annie Fisher writes poems of outlandish comedy undercut by profound seriousness.’ (Matthew Paul, reviewing ‘The Deal’)

To register for this Zoom meeting and optionally request a reading slot, please apply using this Online Booking Form .
Please see Zoom Event Joining Details panel on left (or below if viewing on a phone).

The guest poets for our third Zoom event will be Veronica Aaronson and Virginia Griem. (Please see Zoom joining details in panel on left).

Veronica and Virginia are well known to our Taunton audience. Both are accomplished poets and are based in Teignmouth where they are members of the organising group for the Teignmouth Poetry Festival.
Please see their biographies below.

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Veronica lives in a quiet haven in South Devon. She is a co- founder and one of the organisers of the Teignmouth Poetry Festival. Her work has been published widely in literary journals, online and in anthologies. Her first collection Nothing About the Birds Is Ordinary This Morning (Indigo Dreams 2018) has been put forward for the 2020 Laurel Prize. One of the poems from the collection was chosen for the Scottish Poetry Library’s Best Scottish Poems Anthology 2019.

Recent comments include “Veronica Aaronson’s poems are lit with a deep luminosity – and numinosity. Striking in her delicate, passionate collection is her subtle juxtaposition of description of the natural world with human concerns, and griefs. She asks us to look, and look again. A fine collection to which you will want to return.”
Roselle Angwin – “There is much beauty in the detail and her use of colour imagery in the poems can be astonishing. Her authentic observations of human character can transform a seemingly ordinary experience into something remarkable, with a quality of transcendence. “
Susan Taylor – “Her second collection Emily’s Mothers is due to be published by Dempsey and Windle this December.”

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Virginia is a poet, painter and potter. She lives in Kingsteignton, Devon and like Veronica is heavily involved in the Teignmouth Poetry Festival.  Virginia is responsible for organising the annual festival poetry competition, as well as curating a festival poetry and art exhibition.

Virginia was awarded First Prize in the Walter Swan poetry Competition at the Ilkley Literary Festival in 2018, and in the past year she has won second prize in the Barn Owl Trust poetry competition, was shortlisted for the Silver Wyvern Award at Poetry on the Lake and was longlisted in the National Poetry Competition 2019. 

As well as having poems appearing in various anthologies, Virginia has created the images for Ian Royce Chamberlain’s illustrated pamphlet Not Forgotten/Nicht Vergessen published in January 2020.

After the success of our first Zoom Poetry Evening we are delighted to invite Chrissy Banks to our next. (Please see joining details in panel on left.)

Chrissy lives and writes in Exeter. She previously worked as a psychodynamic counsellor and trainer. Her poems have been published widely in anthologies and journals.

Chrissy’s first pamphlet was ‘Watching the Home Movies’ (Odyssey) followed by ‘Days of Fire and Flood’ (original plus). Her latest collection, The Uninvited, came out last autumn from Indigo Dreams. (Signed copies of the book can be ordered post free directly from Chrissy at seaember@live.co.uk or through her website www.chrissybankspoetry.com, price £9.99)

She won second prize in the inaugural Wordsworth Trust Single Poem Competition in 2017 and has been longlisted in the Welsh Poetry Book Awards, prior to a final selection. A Poetry Business pamphlet, ‘Frank’, is due to be published in May of next year.

Fire River Poets have decided it is time to begin our regular monthly poetry evenings again.
We are still unable to hold our regular events at the Creative Innovation Centre, so we are introducing ‘virtual events’ using Zoom, which many people are now familiar with.
We hope it will be a welcome return to some sort of normality for everyone who writes poetry or has a love of poetry.

Our first Zoom Event will be on Thursday 3 September 2020 starting at 7.30 pm with guest poets Rosie Jackson and Graham Burchell.
See biographies for Rosie and Graham at the end of this post.

If you are interested in joining this Zoom Event, please send an email to events@fireriverpoets.org.uk.
We will let you have the Zoom Meeting Link and some joining instructions nearer the time.

Open mic slots – Poets who would like to read should apply additionally through the Contact Us page of the website. Slots will be restricted to one poem per poet for this virtual event.

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ROSIE JACKSON lives in Frome, Somerset, where she teaches creative writing workshops and works in arts and health. She has a first-class degree from the University of Warwick, a D. Phil. from York, and has taught in many universities and educational settings, including the University of East Anglia, Nottingham Trent, Bristol UWE, Bethesda Writers’ Centre Washington DC, Skyros Writers’ Lab, Cortijo Romero, and the Open College of the Arts.

Her poetry pamphlet What the Ground Holds (Poetry Salzburg, 2014) was followed by her first collection The Light Box (Cultured Llama, 2016). Her poetry has been published in Acumen, Ambit, Domestic Cherry, Frogmore Papers, High Window, Poetry Ireland Reiew, Poetry Salzburg Review, Scintilla, Tears in the Fence, The Interpreter’s House, other journals and anthologies; set for GCSE; used for a sculpture by Andrew Whittle in the grounds of a Dorchester hospital; and she has collaborated with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

With Dawn Gorman she won the Hedgehog Pamphlet competition 2019; won 1^st prize and the Hilly Cansdale award at Wells 2018, 2^nd prize at Torbay 2018, 1^st prize in the Stanley Spencer Poetry Competition 2017, 3^rd prize Hippocrates Open 2017, Hilly Cansdale Award Wells 2015, 1^st prize Bath 2015, 2^nd Prize Battered Moons 2015, 1^st and 2^nd prizes Berkshire Festival, 2016 and 2017, 2^nd prize Havant Literary Festival, and has been widely commended at Bridport and elsewhere. She was a Hawthornden fellow 2017.

Her books of prose include Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion; Frieda Lawrence; The Eye of the Buddha (fiction); Mothers Who Leave and she has won awards for her short stories. The Glass Mother: A Memoir was published by Unthank Books in 2016.  www.rosiejackson.org.uk     

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GRAHAM BURCHELL lives in South Devon. He has lived and worked in Zambia, Saudi Arabia, Tenerife, Mexico, France, Chile and the United States. He was a teacher from 1976 to 2003, with a B.Ed. in Art and Education. He became a full-time writer in 2004. His first collection Vermeer’s Corner, based on the 35 known paintings of Johannes Vermeer, was published in 2008 (Foothills Publishing, NY).

With an M.A. in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University in 2010, he went on to publish The Chongololo Club with Pindrop Press in 2012; Kate (Indigo Dreams Press) and Cottage Pi (one of the winners of the inaugural Sentinel poetry book competition), both published in 2015. His next collection will be published by Indigo Dreams in September 2018.

His poetry has appeared in most of the major UK poetry magazines and he has won, been placed or commended in many competitions. These include 1^st prize in the the National Stanza Competition 2015; winning the 2012 Canterbury Festival Poet of the Year; runner-up in the 2016 BBC Proms poetry competition; 3^rd place in the Bridport Prize 2017; 1^st prize in the Red Shed Poetry Competition, 2018. 

He was a Hawthornden fellow 2013. For several years he has been active in the poetry scene in Devon, as chairperson of Moor Poets and as one of the team of five who run the Teignmouth Poetry Festival. www.gburchell.com

Event Postponed

BUT, do read FRP member Graeme Ryan’s interview with Will Harris

Will Harris

Bio: Will Harris is a poet and critic from London. He is the author of the chapbook, All This Is Implied, and the essay Mixed-Race Superman. He has had work published in The Guardian, the Poetry Review, and the London Review of Books, among other places. He was the recipient of the Poetry Fellowship from the Arts Foundation in 2019. His debut collection RENDANG (Granta, 2020) is the Poetry Book Society Choice for spring 2020.