Four London Poets

Contact: grambuch@aol.com

Graham Buchan introduces four top quality London poets: Agnes Meadows, Wendy French, Brett Van Toen and Richard Rickford. Any of these four would be top of the bill at many poetry nights. Their poetry, ranging from frivolous to serious, is literate, intelligent and comes from real life experience and a concern for others. Did we say it's free? It's free.

Wendy French has long combined poetry with her work in healthcare. She is currently poet in residence at the Macmillan Cancer Centre (UCH) and runs writing sessions at Maggie’s Centre (Charing Cross). For twenty years she worked in mental health, having finished her teaching career as head of the Maudsley and Bethlem Hospital School. She now facilitates writing work with people with aphasia and dysphasia, helping them to recover their use of language through poetry, and with adults with mental health problems and cancer.

Wendy has published two collections, Splintering the Dark, and surely you know this, two chapbooks, a collaboration, Born in the NHS, and has co-edited three books from hospital schools. She is currently editing a book for the Cardiovascular Research Trust.

Wendy won the Hippocrates Poetry and Medicine Prize in 2010 and was placed second in 2011, and she has been a judge on three major poetry competitions.

Brett Van Toen, a graduate and post-graduate in philosophy and librarianship, worked variously in Marketing, Software Engineering, Civil Engineering and Librarianship. He is both poet and poetry promoter, with strong views on the dangers of poetry being narrow, obscure and elitist. Over a three year period he was involved in the project Shadowork, working with Mario Petrucci, Martin Crucefix and Sarah Dudman. Funded by the Arts Council and the Millennium Fund, they undertook seminar and performance tours around the UK, writing and performing their pieces collaboratively. He also hosted the London event Poetry Shack for four years and a poetry and music supper club in Stoke Newington before that.

Brett has published widely and has won or been short listed for a number prizes.

Agnes Meadows was born in north-east London and has worked as a journalist, fund raiser, promoter and workshop facilitator. Since she was 15 she has lived and worked around the world: Mexico, the Philippines, Australia, Turkey, the West Bank, Gaza, Singapore. She has also read New York, Israel, Spain and Poland, and was ten times featured poet at the Austin International Poetry Festival. She has twice, recently, read at the Babylon Festival in Iraq.

In 2004 Agnes started Loose Muse, London’s premiere event for women writers, which has now extended to Manchester and Penzance, and she has recently produced two anthologies of new writing by women.

Agnes’s books are “You and Me”, “Quantum Love”, “Woman”, “At Damascus Gate on Good Friday” and “This One Is For You”. She is on the Board of the Poetry Book Society and has been a Poetry Adviser for Channel 4.

Richard Rickford was born in Camberwell and has spent most of his life in London apart from studying history at Exeter University. History, particularly that of modern Russia (he visited in 1989) and the Byzantine period, remains a strong interest. He now works as the Research Assistant in the Policy and Advocacy Department of Missing People - a charity that works as a lifeline for the vulnerable, the missing and those that get left behind.

Richard has been published in several magazines. His writing varies from serious to witty and he quotes as influences WH Auden, Douglas Dunn, Denise Levertov and Geoffery Hill. He was chair of Richmond Writers and now co-hosts the monthly event Sweet Thursday.

Entry: FREE

Time: 8:00pm