Book Launch - Instead, Let Us Say, by Dawn Gorman, and What the Peacock Replied (anthology)

2nd September 2019, 7:30pm - 10:30pm, The Keep, 29 Castle Street, Guildford GU1 3UW

Today's the day my third pamphlet, Instead, Let Us Say, will be launched in Guildford. The book was the winner of this year's Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize. The event will be a busy one, as there will also be readings from at least 20 contributors to What the Peacock Replied, the anthology compiled from shortlisted entries into the single poem element of the same competition.

Praise for Instead, Let Us Say:
"Down to earth, tender and compassionate, these are resilient poems 'loud with life', grounded in working-class roots, with a delicious alertness to sensual detail. Equally remarkable is their unabashed metaphysics, celebrating the hidden realities of love and unity of all life. On Hearing Alice Oswald Read Memorial is sheer genius."
Rosie Jackson

"This is a sensual, tender-hearted poetry, aglow with its own humanity. There is, throughout, an intensely felt oneness with the natural world, rendered by a true poet in possession of impressive technical gifts. A very fine collection that rewards our attention."
Martin Malone

"This pamphlet - Dawn Gorman's third - is a treasure-trove of moments caught in passing and held up to the light of the poet's imagination. Her work shows us how the central paradox of poetry is accomplished: how words can preserve fleeting impressions, stay the ephemeral, capture the intangible: 'Time's mouth is hungry, wide, / and one thing pulls in the next'. There is emotional depth here too; at the heart of the book is a group of poems tracing the arc of a love affair in images that are rooted in particular times and places yet reach out beyond the purely personal. That sense of connectedness with other lives is vividly enacted in other poems like Clout and Maiden Stakes where the poet evokes raw and brutal incidents with tender eloquence."
Lesley Saunders