Stepping Forward in Solidarity

Nicola Garrard, Ted Gooda, Juliet Starbuck, Liz Barnes, Kate Collier
Photo credit: Elsie GM

by SMP treasurer, Carol Hayton

On 8th March, the Shelley Memorial Project celebrated International Women’s Day with a poetry extravaganza hosted by Waterstones bookshop in Horsham. The event featured four excellent Sussex poets: Liz Barnes, Kate Collier, Nicola Garrard, and Ted Gooda, reading extracts from their collections. The poems connected brilliantly with the theme of the evening, Step Forward In Solidarity.

One of the missions of International Women’s Day is to celebrate women creatives, and the poetry event certainly achieved that. In addition to the readings from the headline poets, an Open Mic session invited audience members to read poems reflecting the event’s theme. This session was well supported with thirteen readers coming forward to read, including three students from Christ's Hospital School and one man!

A spokesperson for the Shelley Memorial Project commented,’ We are delighted with the success of our International Women’s Day event. Tickets sold out well in advance of the day, demonstrating the interest in poetry and creative writing from people of all ages, and enthusiasm for International Women’s Day. Shelley promoted women as published writers through encouragement and collaboration and is known to have read and enjoyed poems written by women poets, so we are particularly delighted as a project to have supported International Women’s Day with this event. We would like to thank everyone who took part, Waterstones Horsham for hosting the evening and our fundraising raffle sponsors, Cocoa Loco and Skylark Coffee.’

All proceeds from the event will contribute to the work of the Shelley Memorial Project.