Broadstairs writer Madeleine White launches her debut poetry collection on Tuesday (June 28), at the Bradstow Mill in Broadstairs.
The event, from 7.15pm-9pm, will include readings and refreshments.
The Horse and the Girl is a series of 30 linked narrative poems, conversations between the ‘Horse And The Girl,’ looking at issues such as relationships, climate change, growing older, life, death and change in general. It offers a wry, poignant look at the world around us, with a strong environmental slant.
The collection has been written from the perspective of Madeleine and the relationship she has with her horse and is based along the coast and marshlands of Thanet.
Last April Madeleine had to move her mare Lucie from St Nicholas to the coast because her farmland how had been earmarked for houses.
She said: “I put the first poem on my Facebook page last summer. I had a flurry of responses including one that they could see this as the start of a series. Evidently, so could I… as the rest of the work, based on my own experiences with my mare Lucie, came pouring out in a relatively short space of time.
“The voices in The Horse And The Girl call on us to embrace life and the world we live in, the message being that if we notice the small things, we have a better chance of seeing the big picture.”
Published by Canadian/US publisher Crowsnest in the early days of Covid, Madeleine acclaimed debut novel Mother Of Floods was lauded as a ‘spiritual masterpiece’. She has built on this interconnection of nature and humanity with The Horse And The Girl and was recently interviewed in conjunction with Penguin author Catherine Munroe looking at collaborative survival and personhood.
The Horse And The Girl is currently being serialised on BBC Radio Kent, playing every Tuesday between 9pm-10pm until mid July. You can hear People from the collection on this link: https://bit.ly/people-poem-horse-and-girl
Madeleine published her debut novel Mother of Floods in 2020. The book follows the tradition of writers such as Margaret Atwood – The Handmaiden’s Tale – and Paulo Coehlo -The Alchemist – exploring what it means to be human in the 21st century and how people develop cultural, spiritual and digital identities.
Mum-of-three Madeleine is a former freelance journalist whose first big article was for the Evening Standard in the 90s looking at how her family dealt with her father’s bi polar disorder. The article coincided with the release of the Robert de Niro film looking at the topic, Mr Jones.
The former Clarendon grammar student later turned to teaching and was the brains behind Oi! Magazine produced for and by young people and launched with Marlowe Academy. The magazine went national as So! in 2009. She later worked on Nina-Iraq.com magazine- launched with world bank – for women in Iraq.
The magazines were all platforms to give disenfranchised communities a voice.
The Horse And The Girl is published by Lapwing Publications and costs £10 paperback and £4 digital.
It is available via the publisher and a number of bookshops up and down the country, including Tales on Market Street in Faversham, Sevenoaks Bookshop in Sevenoaks, Harbour Books in Whitstable, The Margate Bookshop in Margate.
You can also buy copies directly from the website: https://sites.google.com/a/lapwingpublications.com/lapwing-store/home