Join award-winning poet Ben Verinder for an evening of nature-themed poetry at Wordsworth Grasmere. Ben will be reading from his award-winning collection How to Save a River, alongside other Lake District-themed work. This event includes a Q&A hosted by Michael McGregor, Robert Woof Director at Wordsworth Grasmere, as well as a drinks reception and an opportunity to purchase a copy of this beautiful limited edition collection.

Ben’s new collection How to Save a River is the winning portfolio of the Michael Marks Environmental Poet of the Year Prize 2024 – 2025. It is a celebration of those who revive and restore rivers, as well as a meditation on addiction and grief. This pamphlet asks how we can save what we have, and how we can mend our relationship with what has gone.

‘These are moving and surprising poems. They lament the degradation of river habitats whilst elegising, too, the loss of a parent. We visit a fire in Cyprus, becks and rivers in the Lake District and the US. Animals of water swim through much of the pamphlet: eels, smolts, efts, crayfish, the salamander. Among this burgeoning life, the strange face of loss is never far from sight. This means that the poems achieve a lovely, multifaceted evocation of human interactions with the life of water, an element from which, finally, strength, comfort and no small degree of hope are drawn.’ – Judges

Ben will also be leading a nature-themed poetry writing workshop at Wordsworth Grasmere on the afternoon of Saturday 13 September.

About Ben Verinder

Ben Verinder lives in rural Hertfordshire. He holds an MA in Writing Poetry from The Poetry School and Newcastle University. He is the 2024/5 Michael Marks Environmental Poet of the Year.

His poems have been published widely, including in The Rialto, Stand, Lighthouse, The North, Black Iris, And Other Poems, and Wild Court. His debut pamphlet, Botanicals, was published by Frosted Fire in 2021 and his second, We Lost The Birds, by Nine Pens in 2023.

In 2022 Ben won the Bournemouth International Writing Prize and his poems have won, been shortlisted for, or commended in, a wide variety of competitions. In 2023 he was commissioned by the Chartered Institute of Public Relations to write a poem to mark its 75th anniversary. He has previously worked and lived in Cumbria and is the biographer of the Cumbrian adventurer and writer Mary Burkett.

Access

One free ticket per session is available for those experiencing financial hardship that would otherwise not be able to attend. This is on a first come first served basis with no questions asked about your situation.