Please join us to celebrate the launch of Thorpeness, the new collection by Alison Brackenbury. Hosting the reading will be poet David Clarke, joining Alison to discuss the new book. The event will feature readings and discussion, and audience members will have the opportunity to ask their own questions. We will show the text during readings so that you can read along.

There is something richly circumstantial about Alison Brackenbury’s poems: they are often rooted in a rural world, or in townscapes which sustain communities and preserve a strong sense of their history and what it gives them.

Thorpeness has delicious surprises, among them ‘Aunt Margaret’s Pudding’, a rewarding culinary experience based on a black-covered handwritten notebook of recipes from Dorothy Eliza Barnes, ‘Dot’, the poet’s grandmother. ‘When I knew Dot, she was a Lincolnshire shepherd’s wife. But, as a young woman, she had been an Edwardian professional cook,’ the poet explains, making her notebook a resource for the contemporary reader.

The world of nature – birds, plants, weathers – comes alive in poem after poem, but there are also important poems of nurture. Brackenbury belongs in a long line of rural and provincial poets who bring England alive in forms and rhythms of renewal. She is a familiar radio voice, performing her won poems and narrating programmes she has scripted.

Registration for this online event will cost £2, later redeemable against the cost of the book. All attendees will receive the discount code and how to purchase the book during and after event.