Moon, Poetry and Frogs!

The world’s just got a little froggier, thanks to The Frogmore Press’ fabulous anthology of poems about the moon, and its bi-annual Frogmore Papers (issue 94) glowing in lime green!

Pale Fire was given it’s Brighton launch at The New Venture Theatre last week. I joined nine other poets performing work from the anthology to an excellent turn out of enthusiastic moon-afficionados.

There was music from singer-song writer Seema Kapila, a short symposium on the cultural history of the moon from Alexandra Loske, and a wonderful changing track of moon images as backdrop to poems from Claire Booker, Neil Gower, Maria Jastrzebska, Seema Kapila, Chris McDermott, Zel Norwood, John O’Donoghue, Jeremy Page, Stephen Plaice, Chris Sykes and Janet Sutherland.

Maria Jastrzebska

“This anthology is published 50 years after human kind first set foot on a world outside our own,” said editor, Alexandra Loske. “For the first time, we were able to see the Moon up-close, a place and object we had been observing, visualising and imagining for millennia. The magnitude of this human achievement and its impact on our culture and psyche cannot be underestimated.”

The autumn issue of The Frogmore Papers is packed with goodies, including the winning and short-listed poems from this year’s Frogmore Poetry Prize, judged by John O’Donoghue. Polly Walshe was the winner with her atmospheric poem ‘Our District’, and runners up are Michael Swan (”We Refugees’) and Robert Hamberger (‘Sleeping with Uncertainty’).

Issue 94 also offers the reader poems by Stephen Bone, Claire Booker, Laura Chalar, Alison Harrison, Rowan Lyster, D A Prince, Rachel Spence, Beatrice Stanley and Roddy Williams among others. As always, there are short stories and book reviews.

To submit your work to The Frogmore Papers, please adhere to the submissions windows of April and October. For more details, or to buy copies of Pale Moon or The Frogmore Papers, please visit: The Frogmore Press

Frogmore Press celebrates Moon Landings

Fifty years ago this month, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon and uttered his now infamous phrase: “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

As poets, we continue to be awed, fascinated and drawn into the orbit of our nearest planet.

To celebrate all things lunar, The Frogmore Press have published an anthology of contemporary poetry entitled Pale Fire and packed it with work by more than sixty poets,  including Clare Best, Sharon Black, Robin Bolam, Claire Booker, Maggie Butt, Maggie Harris, Seema Kapila, Jane Lovell, Martin Malone, Jessica Mookherjee, Fiona Moore, Grace Nichols, Zel Norwood, Jeremy Page, Cheryl Pearson,  John Rice, Myra Schneider, Peter Stewart, Janet Sutherland, Kay Syrad, George Szirtes and Mark Urbanowicz.

The anthology fascinates with its wide-ranging styles and content. Star of the show (no pun intended) is the moon, which sails through the many stories and emotions contained within these poems. Sometimes it’s a “pale orange egg”, or a “ferrier of calm”, or “an astonished semibreve”, or “a factory light burning on the top floor”. Sometimes it’s benign, sometimes threatening, sometimes plain funny. Never is it boring!

Pale Fire is the brainchild of editor Alexandra Loske and includes a series of exquisite illustrations of the moon by Sussex-based painter Fergus Hare (www.fergushare.net). 

The book was launched last month at Fitzroy House – a gem of a gothic-revival building in Lewes, East Sussex. Not only did the audience get a chance to enjoy (I hope!) hearing a bunch of us read our poems, but they were also treated to an exhibition of drawings, etchings, paintings and sculpture inspired by the moon which had been curated around this amazing circular room.

“Seeing the moon’s desolate landscape up-close may to some initially have felt like a visual disappointment,” writes Alexandra Loske. “But the magnitude of this human achievement and its impact on our culture and psyche cannot be underestimated.”

Pale Fire is testimony to the poetic impact of the moon. The anthology is available from The Frogmore Press price £10.

For more information go to: Frogmore Press