We are delighted to invite Julie Sampson and Michellle Diaz to this FRP Zoom event.
Julie Sampson’s work is widely published in magazines and anthologies, and has been shortlisted, or highly commended in a variety of competitions (including Survision, James Tate Memorial Prize and Geoff Steven’s Memorial Poetry Prize).
She edited Mary Lady Chudleigh; Selected Poems (Shearsman, 2009) and has three collections: Tessitura (Shearsman, 2011); It was when it was when it was (Dempsey and Windle, 2018); and Fivestones (Lapwing publications, 2022).
Julie has a PhD on writer H.D. (Exeter University, 1997). She researches the history of Devon’s women writers and is preparing publication of a non-fiction book as well as follow up collection to Fivestones, focused on Devon landscapes and family history.
Michelle Diaz lives in Glastonbury. She was made Chaired Bard of Ynis Witrin in 2022 – The Jubilee year. This meant lots of civic and poetic responsibilities.
She has been published in numerous journals, both online and in print ie Candlestick Press, Under the Radar and 14 Magazine.
She was recently nominated for the Forward prize in the Single Poem category.
Her debut pamphlet ‘The Dancing Boy’ was published in 2019 by Against the Grain.
She is working on her first full collection.
More about Julie Sampson
Her poems are forthcoming in the anthology Thin Places & Sacred Spaces (editor Sarah Law). Copies of books available either via her website https://www.juliesampson.com/bookshop or email julie.sampson18@gmail.com
From Reviews
‘While this collection opens with what may be a homage to Frances Horovitz and elsewhere cites other women poets including H.D., Eavan Boland and Sylvia Plath, these neatly crafted poems recall Gary Snyder in the primacy of place, the wild plants and creatures that help define place, and the writer’s place among them – with southwest England and southwest Scotland rather than the Pacific USA, here providing the vital bedrock.’
Aidan Semmens
This compelling unique collection is profoundly rooted in nature and place. Sampson’s engagement with Devon’s history, landscape and culture runs deep, and these poems are wonderfully informed by geographic specifics and personal recollection. Sampson’s language is precise, lyrical and uplifting, drawing especially on women ancestors and poets … Fivestones shimmers with ‘past’s living myth’, its resurgent presences overlaying our own in a palimpsest of vital and mysterious knowledge.’
Sarah Law, Editor Amethyst Review
‘Fivestones interweaves a number of themes: the natural landscape, voices from the past including figures from history, writers or ancestors and also modern technology. Indeed, an interesting feature of the collection is how the poems speak both of the past and of contemporary life simultaneously … the overall effect of the collection is to present the reader with an enigmatic and haunting experience. Fivestones is an impressive collection of work.’
Sally Long ed. Allegro Poetry Magazine
‘This collection is a tour-de-force on the history of Devon and by extension beyond…’
Dennis Greig