Coast to Coast to Coast: The Year Ahead
Competitions, Launches, Collective Journals and Individual-Poet Journals
Summer 2019
6th issue of Coast to Coast to Coast
Created + Edited by Maria Isakova Bennett
Launching Saturday September 14th (6–8pm), at the Open Eye, Liverpool
This event will also feature readings from one of the winners of Coast to Coast to Coast’s second Individual Poet Journal Competition, Isabel Bermudez (with her journal, Madonna Moon). Excerpts will also be read from the second winner’s work, Painting the Stones Back by Lydia Harris. Lydia is from Westray and her work evokes notes from the island.
The extra-large Summer Issue also contains poems from the shortlisted poets: Mara Adamitz Scrupe, Pam Thompson, Finola Scott, Susannah Violette.
Poets will be invited to the launch event in Liverpool, late-Summer 2019 and will receive a complimentary copy of the journal.
September 2019
3rd Mini-Portfolio Competition
Following the publication of limited-edition works by Jane Lovell, Rebecca Gethin (Spring 2019), Isabel Bermudez and Lydia Harris (Summer 2019) the third Coast to Coast to Coast mini-portfolio competition will open in late Autumn 2019 – an opportunity to see your work between hand-stitched covers in a special limited edition journal
Forthcoming Publications: Individual-Poet Journals
June 2019 | Individual-Poet Journal
The Nunwell Letter
Maureen Boyle
A small edition of hand-stitched journals containing Maureen Boyle's long poem, The Nunwell Letter is based on the stay of Anne More (John Donne’s wife) on the Isle of Wight in 1611. The Nunwell Letter came out of Maureen's award of the inaugural Ireland Chair of Poetry Travel Bursary.
*
Maureen Boyle’s debut poetry collection, The Work of a Winter is published by Arlen House Press in 2018. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Queen’s University Belfast. She won the Ireland Chair of Poetry Prize; the Strokestown International Poetry Competition; the Fish Short Memoir Prize and the inaugural Ireland Chair of Poetry Travel Bursary to research the poem The Nunwell Letter on John Donne’s wife, Anne More’s, stay on the Isle of Wight in 1611. She taught Creative Writing with the Open University for ten years and teaches English in St Dominic’s Grammar School, Belfast.
June 2019 | Individual-Poet Journal
Mira Schendel Project
John Glenday
A journal and exhibition pieces linked to the work of artist Mira Schendel. This is a project with acclaimed poet John Glenday.
*
John Glenday lives and works in Scotland. He has published four collections: The Apple Ghost (1989); Undark (1995); Grain (Picador, 2009) – Grain was shortlisted for both the Ted Hughes Award and the Griffin International Poetry Prize; and The Golden Mean (Picador 2015) won the 2015 Roehampton Poetry Prize.
Summer 2019 | Individual-Poet Journals
Isabel Bermudez
Lydia Harris
The winners of the second Coast to Coast to Coast mini-portfolio competition for individual-poet journals were Isabel Bermudez and Lydia Harris. Their journals will be created and published in Summer 2019.
*
Isabel Bermudez worked in Colombia in television, specialising in documentary, as a Producer/Director and Camerawoman (1998–2001). In Sri Lanka, she worked in educational television and as a Special Correspondent for the Island Newspaper. (1993–1995). Her poems are widely published. She was shortlisted six times for the Bridport Prize and was most recently commended in the 2018 Winchester Poetry Prize. Her collections are Extranjeros, (Flarestack Poets 2015), Small Disturbances (Rockingham Press, 2016) and Sanctuary (Rockingham Press, 2018). She lives in Orpington, Kent.
*
Lydia Harris has made her home on the Orkney island of Westray. In 2017 she held a Scottish Book Trust New Writer Award for poetry. The Westray Writers meet regularly in her home and the Westray Poetry Library is housed there on a shelf in her porch.