Poems of Peace - And War: Tuesday 11 November, West Greenwich Library, 7-7:30pm

Hello everyone - sharing the below on behalf of Mick Delap:

This is an  appropriate title for Remembrance Day, and a sad reminder that it's impossible to think of peace without thinking of war.

An amazing line-up of poets , including local ATA poet Mick Delap,  and West Greenwich resident Lorraine Mariner,  will be reading their own work,  but also key poems about conflict by a wide range of other poets.  There  will be live music, with interludes on harp by the fabulous Lucia Foti.   Admission free.  Interval refreshments. 

The poets are the core group of the local Nevada Street Writers, founded by Mick Delap in the eponymous street down by Greenwich Theatre in 2009. They are still going strong!  You will hear the different voices of Mick Delap, Malene Engelund, Lorraine Mariner, and Jocelyn Page,  reading their own choices, as well as what  other members of the Nevada Street group who cannot be present on the night have chosen. 

Who’s Who:

Mick Delap is a long time Greenwich resident.  He took up writing poetry along the way, publishing his first collection, River Turning Tidal in 2003, and his second, Opening Time in 2016.  Mick has never stopped supporting the reading and the writing of poetry in South East London. He gathered the group of poets still at the heart of the Nevada Street Writers in 2009.  They still meet regularly.

Lucia Foti is a London-based Italian harpist. Supported by Trinity College London and a Trinity Laban Scholarship, she has recently completed her master’s degree with distinction at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. She is the recipient of prizes in France (2012), Italy (2015) and Britain (2023 and 2024). Lucia freelances with various orchestras and ensembles, performing widely abroad as well as at leading London venues including Kings Place, Cadogan Hall, St John’s Smith Square, St James’s Piccadilly and the Painted Hall in Greenwich.

Lorraine Mariner lives in Greenwich and works as a librarian at the National Poetry Library, Southbank Centre. She has published two collections with Picador, Furniture (2009) and There Will Be No More Nonsense (2014) and has been shortlisted for the Forward Prize twice, for Best Single Poem and Best First Collection, and for the Seamus Heaney Centre Poetry Prize. Her third collection Little Anchors is due from Picador in Autumn 2026. She has edited several titles for Candlestick Press, including Ten Poems About Friendship (2016) and Ten Poems about Libraries (2024).

Jocelyn Page is a poet from Connecticut, USA, living in London. She teaches English and Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College and the University of London, and is Resident Creative Consultant on the ‘Just Poetry’ project at Greenpeace, CJL. Jocelyn’s publications include You've Got to Wait Till the Man You Trust Says Go (argent press, 2016) - winner of the Goldsmiths’ Writer Centre’s inaugural Poetry Pamphlet award, and smithereens (tall-lighthouse press, 2010). She is co-chair of the National Association of Writers in Education. 

Sarah Westcott is a poet, originally from Devon. She has published three pamphlets and two full collections - Slant Light and Bloom (Pavilion Poetry, Liverpool University Press). Her latest pamphlet is Almanac - hand-stitched and published by Coast to Coast to Coast. Sarah is currently researching and writing inter-species poetry as part of a PhD at the University of Birmingham. She has been working with tadpoles, bats and nightingales to co-create poems that explore the interesting spaces where human and more than human intersect.