Two Rivers Press is delighted to invite you to the launch party for Jean Watkin’s first collection,  Scrimshaw,  on Friday, 21 June, 2013 at 7pm.

Then,  stay for the Poets’ Cafe, where Jean, as this month’s special guest,  will read from her collection.  She’ll be surrounded by the usual open mic.

All are welcome ! Come, read, listen, buy a book, go home!

When: 7pm for the launch; 8pm doors open for Poets’ Cafe, Friday 21st June

Where: Poets’ Cafe,   McDevitt’s Studio. South Street Arts Centre, South Street, Reading, RG1 4QU

Cost: Launch  free; Poets’ Cafe £5

The Whiteknights Studio Trail is a wonderful way to celebrate this area of Reading and acquaint yourself with the fabulous MERL (Museum of English Rural Life) and University of Reading, indeed some judicious shortcuts across the university grounds will take you to the Fine Art Department whose students are joining us on the trail this year, and nearer to venues 15 and 14.

Your trail might follow jewellers or textile artists for example or perhaps you will take potluck – all the venues will have our distinctive Logo on markers outside. A PDF of the indispensable and iconic guide is available on this page and hard copies will be posted through the doors of local residents and on display in libraries as well as many public buildings through out the area of Berkshire.

Various Reading buses serve the area – routes 9, 19, 20, 20a, 21 and 144 take you to the centre of the trail whilst buses 5,6,13,14 and 17 take you very close. Further details can be found at Reading Buses

Free parking provided by the university can be found off Pepper Lane. See map in pdf brochure linked below.

Refreshments will be served at venues 3, 16 and 22 – Progress Theatre, Redlands School and MERL. So this June hit the trail and bring your friends and family!

A complete brochure of the Whiteknights Studio Trail is available as a pdf here.

Her poems explore the spectrum of family relationships, the creativity of craft workers and artists, as well as benign or savage aspects of the natural world. A native Briton sees Roman glassmaking; a drug addict sleeps in a cardboard box; the poet and a fox make eye contact for precious seconds, and their poems capture them in time.

About the author:
Jean Watkins was born in West Yorkshire and has lived in Reading for many years. She gained a BA in English from the University of Reading in 2001. Her poems have been published in Mslexia, Magma, South, The Sunday Telegraph and many anthologies. She reads regularly at Reading’s Poets’ Café and at venues further afield.

This collection is part of Two Rivers Press’s ‘First Collection Series’:
The First Collection Series was launched in 2012 to provide an opportunity for emerging poets, already visible on the reading circuit or in pamphlet form, to have a debut, self-contained statement collaboratively shaped, edited, designed and published.

‘These are poems with all their senses on alert. Precise and subtle in their music, the narratives in Scrimshaw build a rich and delicate world of personal feeling and history through the most acute kind of observation. Through it all, like the birds in the beautiful “Migratory”, flies the “dark strand scarcely seen” – dipping, reappearing, almost invisible.’ – Jane Draycott

‘Whether Watkins is championing the artisan – the workers of wood, glass and clay – shining a light on the smallness of the everyday, or turning her keen eye on the natural world, she does so with absolute skill and a deft balance of idea and language. The poems in Scrimshaw are never overplayed: their soft touch aches with absence; they sing with truth and fire.’ – Allison McVety

From this collections:

The Embrace
Robert Gibbings, 1889-1958. Sculpture Gallery, Reading Museum.

From cold stone feel the heat of lovers’ fire,
where, in a sinuous trance, two bodies curl.
He holds her close, one hand under her hair,
one on her thigh. Arced back, their forms dovetail;
her arm is raised, one breast in his arm’s crook
and both have closed their eyes, as scent and touch
drown out all else. They have no need to look,
abandoned as they are to passion’s clutch.

Outside the window a fine net is spread
over a quadrangle. Two birds lie there;
so ragged, hunched and still they’re clearly dead,
so close they might have been a mating pair.
Impossible to say if these two doves
became entangled in the coils of love.

When:   8:00 pm – 10:30 pm, Thursday, 13 June 2013

Where: The Great Western Hotel, 73 Station Road, Swindon, SN1 1DH

Cost: tickets on the door BG Poets members £3, non-members £5

Join in and perform for 5 minutes to a friendly, welcoming audience. Or just sit back and enjoy the performances.

 As part of  A Week of Good Poetry – Bath Poetry Cafe, which starts 10 June, 2013, Claire Dyer, Lesley Saunders and Susan Utting will be holding talks and readings.

Please download the brochure for the full event here.

Where:  MERL, Redlands Road, Reading, RG1 5EX

When:  5pm

Cost:   Free admission!   NB: Although this is a free event, it does need booking in advance as places are limited (click the link).

There is plenty of other poetry going on during the festival, so do check out the listings.

Tom Phillips has waited a long time before publishing this collection, but the wait has been worth it. Recreation Ground is a fully achieved volume in which history and its slogans loom large and the ‘documented dead look down’ on private lives. Without strain or posture these poems are elegantly poised and cadenced. Plain spoken and musical, they have the intellectual and emotional depth that is only to be found in work of the highest order.

Copyright © The London Magazine 2013

For the full review please see the June/July 2013 issue of The London Magazine.

Booking: Because of limited space, some festival events in the Festival require booking in advance.

Cost:  Some events are free to everyone. All events after 6pm are free.  Where charges apply, payment for booked events is required in advance. Anybody who is able to provide a valid student number when booking is able to do so for free.    Please check the listing for individual event details.

Come meet Two Rivers Press poets, Tom Phillips, AF Harrold, Susan Utting, Lesley Saunders,   Claire Dyer and Jean Watkin at this year’s festival.