Please join us for the launch of the fifth and sixth pamphlets in our Five Leaves New Poetry series, which showcases the best emerging poets from the East Midlands.

A well-known conservationist once remarked that the first law of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts. The scale of our impact on the environment now amounts to more than tinkering, but the case for giving nature space to move, adapt and recover remains. Our survival may depend on restoring the ecosystems that we have damaged and
disrupted. Roy Young spent his career making this argument as a scientist. In retirement he has been able to explore the importance of nature in more poetic ways, focusing particularly on his surroundings on the edge of Nottingham, and occasionally travelling beyond. Keep All the Parts includes his reflections on the landscapes, plants and animals that he finds around him, and the beauty of simple, ordinary places.

Jan Norton’s debut pamphlet, Relief Map, traces her journey from a working-class Welsh Valleys childhood to where she finds herself on the map now. These no-nonsense poems are packed with rich detail, evoking vivid memories of that childhood and the people who
populated it. Although the poems leave the Valleys, Wales never leaves the poems, and through laughter, love, sorrow, motherhood and challenges, Norton observes families, friendships, passion and pain in the light of her origins. The Valleys are firmly established as her lodestone for evaluating her current position and direction of travel.

Refreshments provided