Pens of the Earth

Our competition deadline has now passed. Thank you to everyone who entered! Results will be announced by 30th April 2024.

Don’t forget, our competition on the theme of ‘community’ runs until the 14th January 2024 – only a month (and a bit) to go! You can read all about what we’re after here.

Our Crowdfunder ended on 4th December. Thanks to everyone who supported us! We reached 80% of our goal of £2000, but we can add to that several donations made outside the Crowdfunder itself.

Rest assured that we have enough funds to proceed with our plans to produce the book, launch it at the Guildhall on 21st October 2024, and sell it to raise funds for the Solent Seagrass Restoration Project.

If you didn’t get tickets for the launch, or pre-order a copy of the book, don’t worry: there will be more opportunities. Watch this space …

We have a date and a venue for our book launch: 21st October 2024 at the Portsmouth Guildhall! See the dedicated page here for more details, and remember that tickets for the event are available right now through our Crowdfunder (select ‘Book Launch Event Ticket’ on the right hand side).

The write-up of our book project launch is now available to read – it’s a great opportunity to catch up on all the material that was shared on the night: stories, poetry and information about the project and our charity.

Our Crowdfunder is now live! Please donate if you can. Money goes towards publishing our book and raising funds for the Solent Seagrass Restoration Project.

Read about the launch of our new book project and other associated activities here.

Alison Habens reports on Pens’ role in the Plastics Future 2023 Conference. Read about it here.

Our regular Facebook maestro Rachel was recently up in London with Extinction Rebellion, protesting about 55 Tufton Street’s involvement in climate science denial and fossil fuel lobbying. You can read her report over at Star & Crescent.

It’s been a privilege to provide the spoken-word supporting act for Bench Theatre’s production ‘Bob and Doris are Not Afraid’. We’ve been part of something very special.

Thanks to our fabulous environmental speakers, for sharing news of your projects and ideals, and answering the many intriguing questions raised during intervals. Our collections for ‘Seagrass Restoration’ and ‘Wilder Hampshire and Isle of Wight’ raised £67.21.

Thanks to our wonderful spoken word performers for your professionalism and timing, and the range of accents and postures with which you brought the pieces to life. Thanks to all our writers for the mix of emotions, humour, delicate observations and beautiful rhythms which helped the pieces come across so well.

And finally thanks to Loree Westron (author of Missing Words) for helping to run the book table in the foyer each night.