Pamphlet Launch: North by Northnorth – Elvire Roberts, and the Stories In Between – Teresa Forrest

Join us for the launch of the third and fourth pamphlets in the Five Leaves New Poetry series of debut poetry pamphlets by East Midlands writers.

Note: the venue may change so please book early.

In North by Northnorth, Elvire Roberts goes off-compass to find the vanishing point towards True North. She treads her way through queerness in all its meanings: eccentric, Queer, questionable, unwell and downright weird. Her poems ask how a person can bear to be in this world and still find true expression of themselves in their complex flux of identities. There is guidance from Daoism and Buddhism, but above all from the natural world, as questions shapeshift to emerge as insects, mammals, cephalopods, birds. At its heart, North by Northnorth asks how the human animal can move from surviving to thriving.

Elvire Roberts is a poet from the LGBTQ+ community in Nottingham and works as a signed language interpreter between BSL and English. With her first degree being in Chinese Studies, her writing celebrates the doors that languages and cultures open in our minds and bodies. She writes from a physiological reimagining of emotion, often through the animal, vegetable and mineral.

Teresa Forrest’s pamphlet, The Stories in Between, explores heritage, relationships and what it means to belong. Poems about family members are rooted, as are the people themselves, in the landscape around them. But there are also lonely people wandering across the pages, asking to be listened to. And there are glimpses into other people’s lives, showing us how they have been dislocated, and how profound loss has shaped some of them. What is left unspoken, the stories in between the poems, is as important as the message conveyed.

Teresa Forrest is originally from a small town in Northern Ireland and has a degree in Sociology from Queen’s University, Belfast. She now lives in Nottinghamshire and is Secretary of Nottingham Poetry Society. Teresa’s writing is informed by the interpersonal connections between people, or what it means to be placed outside of that.

Refreshments available.