Next Buzzwords Sunday 4th May

Next Buzzwords - Sunday, 4th May

Workshop, led by Charles Bennett, 7pm
Guest readings and open mic 8pm
Guest poet: Charles Bennett

Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham
 £5 waged, £3 unwaged  

CHARLES BENNETT’s award-winning poetry has been published to wide acclaim. He has collaborated with musicians, photographers and artists, and seen his work translated into German and Spanish. His work as a librettist with choral composer Bob Chilcott featured in the 2012 BBC Proms. He was the first Director of Ledbury Poetry Festival and is currently Associate Professor of Poetry at the University of Northampton where he leads the BA in Creative Writing.

His highly-acclaimed second collection, How to Make a Woman Out of Water established him as a poet concerned with marvellous transformations of the landscape. His poems have featured in over 125 poetry magazines including the TLS and The Times (as Frieda Hughes’s Monday Poem). The BBC made a short film about the poetry trail he created in a Herefordshire orchard, and he has given readings (described as ‘captivating’) at a large number of national and international festivals. Quickly becoming recognised as a significant librettist through his collaborations with choral composer Bob Chilcott, he has recently completed work on Soundings, a new non-fiction book which explores relationships of sound and place by discovering the source a North Norfolk river during the course of one spring.

His powerful new collection, Evenlode, is a is a river-journey which moves through a series of names – past considerations of healing places, magical birds, wise ancestors and herbal remedies – until in the end ‘it arrives where it needs to become’ at a healing destination of music and balance. Its emphasis on ecology and environment, combined with memorable evocations of places, people and wildlife, is rich in fresh images which evoke the song of landscape.

Next Buzzwords Sunday 6th April

Next Buzzwords - Sunday, 6th April

Workshop, led by Carrie Etter, 7pm
Guest readings and open mic 8pm
Guest poet:  Carrie Etter

Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham
£5 waged, £3 unwaged


Originally from Normal, Illinois, Carrie Etter spent thirteen years in southern California before moving to England in 2001. She has published three collections, Imagined Sons (Seren, 2014), Divining for Starters (Shearsman, 2011), and The Tethers (Seren, 2009), and edited the anthology, Infinite Difference: Other Poetries by UK Women Poets (Shearsman, 2010). Her poems have appeared in The New Statesman, Poetry Review, The Rialto, The Times Literary Supplement and many other journals in the UK and US. Since 2004 she has taught creative writing at Bath Spa University. Of her new book, Imagined Sons, Bernard O'Donoghue says, "This quite extraordinary book by a writer of great imagistic power and skill leaves a mark on the reader which is ineradicable. These are poems of the utmost importance."

Next Buzzwords Sunday, 2nd March

Next Buzzwords - Sunday, 2nd March

Workshop, led by Peter Daniels, 7pm
Guest readings and open mic 8pm
Guest poet:  Peter Daniels

Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham
£5 waged, £3 unwaged

Peter Daniels has won first prize in a number of poetry competitions including the Ledbury (2002), Arvon (2008) and TLS (2010), and he has twice been a winner of the Poetry Business pamphlet competition. His first full collection Counting Eggs appeared from Mulfran Press in 2012, following a number of pamphlets since 1992 including three from Smith/Doorstop, and Mr Luczinski Makes a Move (HappenStance, 2011). The historically obscene Ballad of Captain Rigby, based on court records at London Metropolitan Archives, came out in 2013 with illustrations by Peter Forster. During a Hawthornden Fellowship in 2009 he began his translations from the Russian of Vladislav Khodasevich, now published by Angel Classics, which was the Poetry Book Society’s autumn 2013 recommended translation.

Next Buzzwords Sunday 9th February

Next Buzzwords - Sunday, February 9th
 
Workshop, led by Ros Barber 7pm

Guest readings and open mic 8pm

Guest poet: Ros Barber

Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham

£5 waged, £3 unwaged


Ros Barber is author of verse novel The Marlowe Papers, published by Sceptre (2012) in the US and St Martins Press (2013) in the US.   In 2013, The Marlowe Papers was awarded the Desmond Elliott Prize, jointly awarded the Author’s Club Best First Novel Award, and long-listed for the Women’s Prize (formerly Orange Prize) for fiction. In 2011, pre-publication, it was joint winner of the Annual Calvin & Rose G Hoffmann Prize 2011 for a distinguished work on Christopher Marlowe.

She has also written three collections of poetry; the most recent (Material, 2008)  a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.  She taught creative writing for the University of Sussex for twelve years, and is currently a lecturer on the MA in Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths, London. She is known for her vivid, engaging readings.

Next Buzzwords Sunday January 5th

Next Buzzwords - Sunday, January 5th
 
Workshop, led by Hilda Sheehan 7pm

Guest readings and open mic 8pm

Guest poet: Hilda Sheehan
 
Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham

£5 waged, £3 unwaged

Hilda Sheehan is a writer and arts events organiser based in Swindon. She has been a psychiatric nurse and Montessori teacher. Her first collection of poetry, The Night My Sister Went to Hollywood, is published by Cultured Llama (www.culturedllama.co.uk). And a pamphlet, Frances and Martine’  is due out in August 2014 from Dancing Girl Press. Her poetry has been published in The Rialto, Poetry Salzburg Review, Tears in the Fence, The Interpreter’s House, ArtemisPoetry, The New Writer, Ink, Sweat and Tears, South, and the BBC Website.

 “Like a firework set off in the heart of the culture’s kitchen”. William Bedford in Acumen 77

Next Buzzwords Sunday December 1st

Next Buzzwords - Sunday, December 1st
 
Workshop, led by David Morley 7pm

Guest readings and open mic 8pm

Guest poet: David Morley
 
Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham

£5 waged, £3 unwaged

David Morley’s collections include The Gypsy and the Poet (Carcanet, 2013), a PBS Recommendation, and Biographies of Birds and Flowers: Selected Poems (Carcanet, 2014). He published Enchantment (Carcanet 2011), a Sunday Telegraph Book of the Year chosen by Jonathan Bate. The Invisible Kings (Carcanet, 2007) was a PBS Recommendation and TLS Book of the Year chosen by Les Murray. He writes for The Guardian and Poetry Review. He was one of the judges of the 2012 T.S. Eliot Prize and the 2013 Foyle Young Poets of the Year.

Next Buzzwords - Sunday, November 3rd

Next Buzzwords - Sunday, November 3rd
 
Workshop, led by Bobby Parker 7pm

Guest readings and open mic 8pm

Guest poet: Bobby Parker

Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham

£5 waged, £3 unwaged



BOBBY PARKER was born in 1982 in Kidderminster, England. He writes a column for popular on-line magazine The Quietus, and his poetry has been widely published. Publications include the critically acclaimed experimental poetry/art books 'Ghost Town Music' and its sequel 'Comberton' (The Knives Forks and Spoons Press). He is currently trying to find a home for 'Blue Movie', his first full-length collection of published poems, and something he considers to be his life's work.

''I love Bobby Parker's writing. Ghost Town Music was one of my favourite things of last year... an endlessly engaging mix-up of artifice, diary, fury, confessional, surrealism/cubism, art and photography. The post-it notes in Comberton are brilliantly funny, thought-provoking and sad ("WE WALKED AROUND AT NIGHT IN THE SUMMER LISTENING FOR COUPLES HAVING SEX WITH THEIR WINDOWS OPEN"), giving it something in common with the first. But it goes further. It's a collection of poems whose narrative outstrips most novels for depth, mystery and staying power.'' - Luke Kennard