Safe Ground traces Rosie Johnston’s search for safety from a tricky upbringing in Troubles Belfast to peace and a sense of home near Margate where T. S. Eliot wrote part of “The Waste Land”.
Her previous book, Six-Count Jive (Lapwing Publications, Belfast, 2019) described the inner landscape of complex posttraumatic stress disorder and her recovery. It was said of it: ‘The choice of seventeen-syllable stanzas is far from limiting; one of the wonders of this book is the variety and nuance she imparts in such small packets of verse’: The Poetry Shed.
In Safe Ground Rosie expands into longer forms of poetry to explore her parents’ choppy marriage, her own capacity for stability and whether she can bring her children up to live even-keel lives in high winds.
Rosie’s writing is anthologised (inter alia) by Arlen House, Live Canon, OneWorld’s Places of Poetry anthology, Fevers of the Mind and American Writers Review. She facilitates writing groups in Cambridge and Margate and has reviewed poetry for London Grip since 2014. Born in Belfast, she spent her teens on the Causeway coast before leaving for Churchill College, Cambridge to read Law. She has been a City solicitor, barmaid, publisher’s commissioning editor, journalist, prison visitor, charity trustee and novelist.
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.