The guest poets for our third Zoom event will be Veronica Aaronson and Virginia Griem.
Veronica and Virginia are well known to our Taunton audience. Both are accomplished poets and are based in Teignmouth where they are members of the organising group for the Teignmouth Poetry Festival. Their biographies appear below.
Veronica lives in a quiet haven in South Devon. She is a co- founder and one of the organisers of the Teignmouth Poetry Festival. Her work has been published widely in literary journals, online and in anthologies. Her first collection Nothing About the Birds Is Ordinary This Morning (Indigo Dreams 2018) has been put forward for the 2020 Laurel Prize. One of the poems from the collection was chosen for the Scottish Poetry Library’s Best Scottish Poems Anthology 2019.
Recent comments include “Veronica Aaronson’s poems are lit with a deep luminosity – and numinosity. Striking in her delicate, passionate collection is her subtle juxtaposition of description of the natural world with human concerns, and griefs. She asks us to look, and look again. A fine collection to which you will want to return.”
Roselle Angwin – “There is much beauty in the detail and her use of colour imagery in the poems can be astonishing. Her authentic observations of human character can transform a seemingly ordinary experience into something remarkable, with a quality of transcendence. “
Susan Taylor – “Her second collection Emily’s Mothers is due to be published by Dempsey and Windle this December.”
Virginia was awarded First Prize in the Walter Swan poetry Competition at the Ilkley Literary Festival in 2018, and in the past year she has won second prize in the Barn Owl Trust poetry competition, was shortlisted for the Silver Wyvern Award at Poetry on the Lake and was longlisted in the National Poetry Competition 2019.
Virginia is a poet, painter and potter. She lives in Kingsteignton, Devon and like Veronica is heavily involved in the Teignmouth Poetry Festival. Virginia is responsible for organising the annual festival poetry competition, as well as curating a festival poetry and art exhibition.
As well as having poems appearing in various anthologies, Virginia has created the images for Ian Royce Chamberlain’s illustrated pamphlet Not Forgotten/Nicht Vergessen published in January 2020.