Author Dr Naomi Foyle launches new book Adamantine across UK and USA
SENIOR Lecturer Naomi Foyle is shining bright in 2020 ‒ celebrating the UK publication of her new transatlantic poetry collection Adamantine with launches in the London and the SE, followed by events in New York and Connecticut later in the spring.
Adamantine, its title evoking the ‘unbreakable’ and ‘lustrous’, is published by Pighog Press, an imprint of Red Hen Press (Pasadena). The US edition was published in July 2019, and the UK edition in December.
Containing poems written for Naomi Foyle’s PhD, on the topic of the warrior woman in narrative verse, and a sequence written during her 2016 treatment for breast cancer, the collection spans the political and the personal in poems that shimmer, in the words of poet and University of Chichester Reader Emeritus Stephanie Norgate, with ‘passion, grace and wit’.
Adamantine remembers and honours pioneering women artists and activists including painter Emily Carr, Mohawk writer Tekahionwake, Anglo-Irish revolutionaries Eva Gore-Booth and Constance Markievicz; and the unsung mothers and orators of West Belfast. Developing Foyle’s concern with the Middle East, so evident in her acclaimed second collection The World Cup and A Blade of Grass: New Palestinian Poetry, the bilingual anthology she edited in 2017, the book also includes tributes to Palestinian and Israeli prisoners of conscience – and to Arabic poetry.
Elsewhere, personal pilgrimages lead the reader from chanteuse Nico’s graveyard in Berlin to the mass crematorium of Grenfell Tower; from harrowing nights on the cancer ward to the first steps toward recovery.
The US edition of Adamantine was launched in North America in August, at readings in NYC (Brooklyn and Manhattan), Bloomsfield NJ, Victoria, Vancouver, Saskatoon and Regina. The Canada Council for the Arts funded the Canadian leg of the tour, including a reading at Emily Carr House in Victoria, a museum honouring the iconic West Coast painter and writer who featured in the opening poem of the book.
On the strength of her American readings, Naomi has been invited back to America in April, to read at venues including the legendary KGB Bar, home of the long-running Monday Night Poetry series, and Guilford Library, Connecticut. In the meantime, the Adamantine road show hits the UK, with events in London and Chichester.
Sun March 8th London Launch of Adamantine
Torriano Meeting House, 99 Torriano Ave, NW5 2RX London | 7:30 | £5/£4
Come and hear two distinctive poets reading at this legendary London venue: Naomi Foyle, celebrating the London launch of her internationalist third collection, Adamantine (Red Hen/Pighog Press, US/UK), and Merrie Joy Williams, presenting her vibrant debut collection Open Windows (Waterloo Press, UK). The event includes the traditional Torriano Open Mic.
Thurs March 26th | Chichester Launch of Adamantine
Chichester Library, Tower St | 7:30 | £7.50 includes glass of wine.
Join novelist, poet and lecturer Naomi Foyle for the Chichester launch of her latest inspiring poetry collection, Adamantine (Pighog Press)
Plus open mic poetry and live music from classical guitarist Linda Kelsall-Barnett. Tickets available from the Library at Tower Street or tel 01243 777351. This reading opens the 2020 South Downs Poetry Festival and is jointly organised by the library and Chichester Poetry.
Sat April 25th | Palestine Inside/Out: An Evening of Poetry, Film & Music
Westbeth Community Centre, Lower Westside Manhattan
7:30 | Other Details TBC
An evening of poetry, film and music celebrating Palestinian people and their continuing struggle to achieve their basic human rights. Featuring Naomi Foyle, reading from her internationalist third collection Adamantine and showing slides of her 2016 visit to Palestinian and Syrian refugee camps in Lebanon; poet and artist Farid Bitar, reading from A Blade of Grass: New Palestinian Poetry (Smokestack Press, 2017, edited by Naomi Foyle); and painter and filmmaker Jacqueline Taylor Basker (New York Institute of Technology), showing her film Endangered: Land, People, Heritage, which explores Israel’s systematic erasure of the indigenous people of Palestine from their land.
Mon April 27th: Monday Night Poetry with Naomi Foyle & Dolores Hayden
The KGB Bar | 85 East 4th St, Manhattan | 7 – 9 pm | Free
Monday Night Poetry is the long-running poetry night at Manhattan’s legendary literary watering hole, the KGB Bar – tonight featuring poet and SF novelist Naomi Foyle, reading from Adamantine, and poet and urban historian Dolores Hayden (Yale University), reading from Exuberance (Red Hen Press, 2019).
Weds April 29th: Poetry & Tarot Writing: Naomi Foyle & Dolores Hayden
Guilford Library | Guilford, CT | Time & Cost TBC
Poetry readings by poet and professional Tarot Card reader Naomi Foyle (Adamantine) and poet and urban historian Dolores Hayden (Exuberance), will be followed by a free-writing workshop with Naomi Foyle, using the symbolic language of the Tarot Cards to provoke poetry and poetic prose.
