My new book of words is out in the world at last!
It was very well worth the wait, with its beautiful cover image by local artist and fellow poet Jim Northover, and brilliant editing by Pindrop editor Sharon Black.

Now I must get back in touch with the poems, ready for a rollercoaster of summer and autumn readings - click on  the 'Readings' tab above for details.


​In this diverse collection, bridges appear in many guises. They span gulfs between one place and another, one time and another, or even between different ways of understanding the world. They may evoke longing for what seems lost or unattainable. Can language itself become a bridge? Often mistaken or in trouble, but always curious, Alex Josephy and the characters who walk beside her in ‘A Little Bridge’ are constantly striving to connect. The difficulties and joys of making links across different cultures are interwoven with ventures into worlds beyond human experience. On bridges real and imaginary, the poet makes tentative contact with animals, insects, trees and other inhabitants of Earth. After an earthquake in central Italy, she notices that ‘everything is perhaps. Pehaps it always was.’ These are poems where nothing can be taken for granted, but Josephy’s little bridges hold out hope, celebrating the art of the just about possible.

Ekphrasis – poetry derived from or inspired by a work of visual art – has a long history, including perhaps most famously poems by Keats (Ode to a Grecian Urn),  and W. H. Auden (Musée des Beaux Arts).
Poets do often find affinities with painters and paintings.
Earlier this year I took part in a collaborative project between Eastbourne Poetry Café  and the Towner Art Gallery, in which a group of local poets responded to the Towner's 'Sussex Modernism' exhibition.  
My thanks to all who took part, and especially to the Eastbourne Poetry Café for including me. At first  I thought it would be impossible to write in response to a retrospective  art exhibition, but slowly the poems started to arrive...

Here's a link to some of what I wrote. 


And here is one of the poems and its starting point, an uneasily beautiful watercolour by David Jones.
​I loved Jones’s delicate, thoughtful paintings of the view from his studio in Portslade, made around 1927. Suffering from shell shock after World War I, Jones produced paintings that seem to be haunted by memories of the trauma he had recently experienced, across the sea that lay just beyond his balcony. The quote is from Jones’ epic war poem, set in the classical era but relevant to his own times too.

A Dissident Retreat

Oh blessed head, hold the striplings from the narrow sea
David Jones, from ‘In Parenthesis’

A studio facing the waves
should be a little bowl of peace

brightened by a salt breeze,
calmed by sea lullabies.

But the tide is always high
in this beachside house;

it swallows the balcony, spills
into the unfinished painting.

Water colours shiver the sky,
accumulate in clouds

that spread dark rumours
across the dissolving line

between this look-out
and what he’s not forgotten.
​

He sweetens the room
with a holiday deckchair,

flowers in shell colours.
But as he starts to paint, the chair

holds out a stretcher, the asters
stand watchful in their vase.

This is a first for me. New pamphlet, co-written and produced with local poet friend Anwesha Arya, now on sale in our local Waterstones. Nuff said!

Our four woman Rye Arts Festival reading was a great experience, despite the awful weather which meant we performed in St Mary's church instead of the castle. The readers were  amazing, the church a wonderfully evocative setting. Martin and Kt Bruce of Rye News and Harbour Videography made a small video recording that gives a good flavour, and Matt Wells took these photos. The poems got the airing they had been wanting, having been launched in lockdown!

Looking forward to 26th September, when I'll be performing 'Again Behold the Stars' in the herb garden inside the walls of the Ypres Castle here in Rye, as part of the fabulous Rye Arts Festival 2024. Glimpses of Italy brought to my new home iin south-east England! I feel very lucky to have three other Siege Girls getting ready to share the readings with me - Janet Stott, Judith Shaw and Isabel Ryan. The beautiful castle setting should add a whole other dimension, as Rye meets Montalcino meets the frustrations and solaces of lockdown.

After two years in limbo, reasons to be cheerful... we're living in our renovated house...I have a desk with a view... books coming out of their boxes. New notebook.  New pencils. Oh, especially the new pencils.