18th November, 1830-2100
Please come and celebrate the launch of Poppy by Joseph Minden. Joseph will be joined by Will Harris and Anthony Anaxagorou for readings and conversation.
In Poppy, Joseph Minden explores how the totems of remembering are always, also, sites of suppression. The poems in this debut collection take in a research trip to the battlefields of Flanders and the Somme, an ill-fated visit to Penang, rumours of the Opium Wars, fragments of family myth and a fear of familiar vampires – all grimy with the trash of establishment British history. In these pages, Adlestrop meets 'Robin Hood / bewitched by a leg of tandoori chicken' and drunk Brits stumble around the Menin Gate with 'Lest We Forget' stitched into their polo shirts.
Joseph Minden is a poet and secondary school teacher. Past publications include Paddock calls: The Nightbook (slub press); The Beef Onion with Will Harris and Hugh Foley, Derivatives with Kat Addis, Woodvale with the Beam-eye Babies and Diptych Brian (all from The Minutes Press); and Soft Hans (The Koppel Press).
Will Harris is a London-based writer. His debut poetry book RENDANG (2020) is published by Granta in the UK and Wesleyan University Press in the US. It was a Poetry Book Society Choice, shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. His second book of poems, Brother Poem, will be published by Granta in 2023.
Anthony Anaxagorou is a British-born Cypriot poet, fiction writer, essayist, publisher and poetry educator. His second collection After the Formalities, published with Penned in the Margins, is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the 2019 T.S Eliot Prize along with the 2021 Ledbury Munthe Poetry Prize for Second Collections. His third collection Heritage Aesthetics will be published by Granta on 3 November 2022.