Defend and Defy

An evening of poetry and stories from Emma Must and Helen Beynon about the struggle to preserve the other than human word, with a focus on Twyford Down in Winchester where part of the the South Downs was carved out to make way for the M3, destroying a section of wildlife habitat. The evening will also feature readings by local writers.

Helen Beynon (Helen Baczkowska) is a writer and ecologist living in rural Norfolk.  Her writing is largely non-fiction and explores the histories, both natural and human, of places, as well as memories of 30 years as an environmental campaigner. Helen has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglian and in 2021, was shortlisted for the Nan Shepherd prize for under-represented voices in nature.

Previous publications include Twyford Rising, land and resistance, published in 2020.  Twyford Rising, published under the name Helen Beynon, is an oral history of Britain’s first direct action road protest camp at Twyford Down in 1992.  Information can be found on twyfordrising.org.

Emma Must is a poet living in Belfast. She grew up in Chandler’s Ford. Formerly a full-time environmental campaigner, her debut poetry collection, The Ballad of Yellow Wednesday (Valley Press), was longlisted for the Laurel Prize 2023 and Highly Commended in the Forward Prizes. It includes the corona of sonnets ‘Holloway Letters’, which reflects on her time incarcerated in Holloway Prison in 1993 as one of the ‘Twyford Seven’ for trying to stop the ‘missing link’ of the M3 motorway being built through Twyford Down. Emma’s poem ‘Toll’ won the Environmental Defenders Prize at the 2019 Ginkgo Awards. In 1995, she was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize for Europe, for her efforts towards land conservation.”