Launch Event for 'Sea Between Us' Nine Pens Poetry Anthology

Join us on April 3rd (18:30pm) for the launch Event for 'Sea Between Us' a Nine Pens Press anthology by Catherine Gander, Georgia Hilton and Anna Kisby.

'Sea Between Us', the third Nine Series anthology brings together the work of poets Catherine Gander, Georgia Hilton and Anna Kisby.

In 'The Pelican' Catherine Gander describes how the bird folds 'the mythspan of her wings' as she waits for 'time/ to unruffle the sea', an image that becomes eerily prescient in its description of the work of all three poets. Each unfolds their own 'mythspans' throughout the collection. Georgia Hilton invites us into the mind of 'Cinderella' who contemplates drowning 'just downstream / of the Curraghower' and of the 'Harpy' who turns 'the cold black penny / of her eye upon the world' and Anna Kisby evokes memories of 'Americana' where on the 'Edge of the freeway, weaving like a drunk man, someone is lost' while at the Vermont State Fair a lion-tamer 'pushed my hand clean though the bars, held it there while the lion took a lick.'

These poems examine our place in the world, not just physically, but through shared histories, myths, stories, place and understandings, declaring, as Catherine Gander writes in 'Self Portrait as a Flood Plain' that

This is what happens when a landscape

is both bed

and confluence source

and floodplain one body

Catherine Gander is a poet and scholar. She was born in England, has lived in many countries, and now resides in County Kildare, Ireland. She is the author and editor of several academic books, and her poetry, art, and criticism have been published and anthologised internationally, including in Palette, Poetry Ireland Review, Juniper, Los Angeles Review of Books, Bad Lilies, Ink Sweat and Tears, On the Seawall, One Hand Clapping, Dedalus Press, and many more. Her poems have placed in competitions, most recently for Prole Poetry Laureate, Live Canon, and Verve. She is completing a chapbook called Matches and working toward her first collection.

Georgia Hilton is an Irish poet and fiction writer living in Winchester, England. Her work has appeared in various magazines and anthologies, such as The Rialto, Prole Magazine,192 Magazine, and Perhappened. Georgia has a pamphlet, I went up the lane quite cheerful (2018) and a collection, Swing (2020), both published by Dempsey and Windle. Her poem, Dark-Haired Hilda Replies to Patrick Kavanagh, won the Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize (2018) and her short poem The Lost Art of Staring into Fires was a runner-up in the Briefly Write Poetry Prize (2021). Georgia lives with her husband and three children. She tweets sometimes at @GGeorgiahilton.

Anna Kisby is a poet, archivist and author of the pamphlet All the Naked Daughters (Against the Grain Press, 2017). Her poetry is widely published in magazines and anthologies, she won the Binsted Arts prize 2019, BBC Proms Poetry competition 2016, and was commended in Faber’s New Poets scheme. She has tutored a Poetry School course on writing from historical sources, co-written a textbook on creative history and a play about historical magical practitioners. Originally from London, Anna spent part of her childhood in the USA, and now lives in the rural south-west of England.