Poetry as Exploration of the Past – Saboteur Festival Panel 2020

While our commissioned artists are busying themselves to get content ready for the Saboteur Awards Festival 2020 (remember, we’ll be posting a lot of exciting things on our YouTube channel, which you can subscribe to here), we’ve also been liaising with some exciting panelists.

We’re delighted that, through the medium of Zoom, we’ll be welcoming three historical poets to the Saboteur line-up to run Poetry as Exploration of the Past.

In this panel, three ‘historical poets’ discuss how poetry can be used to explore the historical past. Points of discussion include:

  • How can poetry effect our understanding of a particular place, person or event?
  • How does historical poetry compare with historical fiction? Are the two the same, similar or completely different?
  • What can historical poetry bring to our understanding of history, and is it unique to the genre of poetry?
  • Can poetry make history more accessible?
  • Can modern poets can re-open conversations about history and help us connect it with our current social and political landscape in new ways?

The panel discussion itself will feature:

Kate Garrett is a writer, editor, and folklore obsessive who enjoys haunting 465-year-old houses – as a heritage volunteer. She is the author of several books, including the pirate poetry pamphlet Deadly, Delicate (with a longer seafaring history and folklore collection, Holystone, currently in progress), and the forthcoming verse novella Hart & Halfpenny (TwistiT Press, March 2021) which considers the life and beliefs of James VI & I, and how historical echoes play out in our everyday contemporary lives. Her poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net, the Pushcart Prize, and longlisted for a Saboteur Award. 


She is also the founding editor of the journals Three Drops from a Cauldron, Picaroon Poetry, Lonesome October Lit, and Bonnie’s Crew, the magical editor at Mookychick magazine, and a contributing writer and reader at Pussy Magic. Born in rural southern Ohio, Kate moved to the UK in 1999, where she still lives with her husband, five children, and a cat – currently halfway up a hillside in Sheffield. www.kategarrettwrites.co.uk.

Juliette van der Molen is an expat poet living in Wales. She is an intersectional feminist and member of the LGBTQIA community. Her work has appeared in several publications both online and in print. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of The Net. She is the author of three poetry books: Death Library, Mother, May I? and Anatomy of A Dress. Her forthcoming book- Confess: The Untold Story of Dorothy Good will be published by TwistiT Press, October 2020. She is the poetry editor & book reviewer for Mookychick Magazine. She has also been shortlisted for Best Reviewer in Literature (Saboteur Awards 2020). You can connect with her via Twitter @j_vandermolen, Instagram @juliette.writes or through her website at www.JulietteWrites.com.

Annabel Mahoney is a writer, essayist and researcher from the UK. She has been shortlisted for a of poetry and prose prizes by the Human Rights Watch, Forward Poetry and formed part of a team put forward for the 2016 National Lottery Award for Best Heritage Project with the London Transport Museum. She has authored two collections, Wyf King (Lapwing Publications) and St Crispin in the Trenches (Another New Calligraphy) and is the Editor in Chief of the Wellington Street Review.

We’re tremendously excited to be welcoming these poets to the Saboteur Awards Festival 2020! The event page for the panel itself is now live and available by clicking here. Even though this is a digital event it is still ticketed (Zoom limitations apply) so you’ll need to “purchase” a ticket, although we are making this a completely free event.

If you’d like to donate to Sabotage Reviews in lieu of ticket prices, you’re welcome to do so and that feature is available:

Ticket sales for Poetry as Exploration of the Past will close at midday (12:00pm) on Friday, May 15 (to make sure we have time enough to contact all ticket holders with the necessary details), so go, go, go get buying!

Also, don’t forget to vote in the Saboteur Awards 2020!