Next Buzzwords Sunday December 8th

 

Next Buzzwords Sunday December 8th

 

 Upstairs at the Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham

7pm Workshop lead by Michael Bartholomew Biggs and Nancy Mattson

Open mic and readings 8pm

Guest poets Michael Bartholomew Biggs and Nancy Mattson

 pay on the door, £5 waged, £3 unwaged.

 

As always for the December meeting, if you would like to read somone else's work at the open mic, please do. It has been suggested that some may like to read Ann Drysdale's poems as she died in August and was such a good friend to Buzzwords.

 

Michael Bartholomew-Biggs is poetry editor of the online magazine London Grip.  He began writing poetry, rather unexpectedly, about half-way through a career as a professional mathematician; he has now retired from the latter but not from the former.  He has published six full collections, the most recent of which are Fred & Blossom (2013, a narrative sequence set in the 1930s), Poems in the Case (2018, a hybrid of poetry collection and murder mystery) and Identified Flying Objects (2024, contemporary responses to the prophet Ezekiel).  For over twenty years he and Nancy Mattson have organised poetry readings at St Mary’s church in Islington – originally under the title Poetry in the Crypt but now elevated to Poetry above the Crypt.

Nancy Mattson is a Finnish-Canadian writer who moved from the Canadian prairies to London in 1990. Her four poetry collections cross borders of time, place and language from North America to Europe and Russia. Vision on Platform 2 (2018) and Writing with Mercury (2006) have mainly contemporary themes but draw on memory, myth, art, faith and family stories. Other books dig into history. Finns and Amazons (2012) brings together Russian women avant-garde artists and a Finnish great-aunt who moved to Soviet Karelia in 1932 but disappeared in 1939. Maria Breaks Her Silence (1989), a possible poetic biography of a 19^th century Finnish woman immigrant to Canada, was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award. Nancy was awarded a Hawthornden fellowship in 2007. She co-organises Poetry Above the Crypt in Islington, London

 

Next Buzzwords Sunday November 10th

 

Next Buzzwords Sunday November 10th

 

 Upstairs at the Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham

7pm Workshop lead by Helen Ivory and Martin Figura

Open mic and readings 8pm

Guest poets Helen Ivory and Martin Figura

 pay on the door, £5 waged, £3 unwaged.

 

Martin Figura’s collection and show Whistle were shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award and won the 2013 Saboteur Award for Best Spoken Word Show.  Shed (Gatehouse Press) and Dr Zeeman’s Catastrophe Machine (Cinnamon Press) were both published in 2016.  In 2021 he was Salisbury NHS Writer in Residence; the resulting pamphlet My Name is Mercy (Fair Acre Press) won a national NHS award. A second pamphlet from Fair Acre Press Sixteen Sonnets for Care came out in October 2022. His latest collection The Remaining Men  has just been published by Cinnamon Press. 

 
Helen Ivory is a poet and visual artist who makes shadowboxes and collage. She was awarded a Cholmondeley Award by the Society of Authors in 2024. She edits the webzine Ink Sweat and Tears and teaches for the National Centre for Writing Academy. Her surrealist chapbook  Maps of the Abandoned City was published by  SurVision in 2019 and the poem The Square of the Clockmaker is riding the rails as one of the Poems on the Underground.  She  has work translated into Polish, Ukrainian, Croatian, Spanish and Greek as part of the Versopolis European poetry platform.  Her Wunderkammer: New and Selected Poems appeared from MadHat in the US last year. Constructing a Witch (October 2024) her sixth collection with Bloodaxe Books, is a PBS Winter Recommendation. 

 

Next Buzzwords Sunday October 6th

 

Next Buzzwords Sunday October 6th

 

 Upstairs at the Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham

Workshop lead by Paul Maddern 7pm

Open mic and readings 8pm

Guest poet Paul Maddern

 pay on the door, £5 waged, £3 unwaged.

 

Paul Maddern was born in Bermuda and lives in Ireland. He has four publications with Templar Poetry (Derbyshire) and is editor of Queering the Green: Post-2000 Queer Irish Poetry (Lifeboat Press, Belfast). He has taught at the University of Leeds and the Seamus Heaney Centre, Queen’s University, and in November 2023 he was Writing Fellow at the James Merrill House, Stonington CT. He is the first three-time winner of the Bermuda Government Literary Award for Poetry, most recently in 2024, for The Tipping Line.

 

Next Buzzwords Sunday September 8th

 

Next Buzzwords Sunday September 8th

 

 Upstairs at the Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham

Workshop lead by Frank McMahon 7pm

Open mic and readings 8pm

Guest poet Frank McMahon

 pay on the door, £5 waged, £3 unwaged.

 

Frank McMahon lives in Cirencester and is a member of Somewhere Else Writers Group and Wordbrew.

His third book of poems, The Light Will Always Return, was published in April 2024.He has also been published in various journals in print and on-line. Last year he read at the Cheltenham Poetry and Literature Festivals.

He won the GWN prize in 2022 and is a runner up in this year’s competition.. In June 2023, with others he set up Writers in the Library in Cirencester and it is going strong. Later that year he worked with two Primary Schools who took part in the national Poetry Together Initiative. Both schools were shortlisted out of 400 and each won £250 for their school library.

He worked as a volunteer to support the 2024 Cheltenham Poetry Festival.

 

Next Buzzwords Sunday July 21st

 

Next Buzzwords Sunday July 21st

 

 Upstairs at the Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham

Workshop lead by Olga Dermott-Bond 7pm

Open mic and readings 8pm

Guest poet Olga Dermott-Bond

 pay on the door, £5 waged, £3 unwaged.

 

 

Olga Dermott-Bond is originally from Northern Ireland, and lives in Warwickshire. She has published two pamphlets: apple, fallen (Against the Grain Press, 2020) and A Sky full of strange specimens (Nine Pens Press, 2021). Her first full collection Frieze, published by Nine Arches Press, was recently featured in The Guardian. She has won competitions including the BBC Proms poetry competition, Welshpool and Poetry on Loan poetry competitions. She is currently a managing editor for Irish poetry journal Dodging the Rain. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and poet in residence for the Coffin Works Museum in Birmingham. @olgadermott

Next Buzzwords June 9th

 

Next Buzzwords Sunday June 9th

 

 Upstairs at the Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham

Workshop lead by Jean Atkin 7pm

Open mic and readings 8pm

Guest poet Jean Atkin

 pay on the door, £5 waged, £3 unwaged.

 

Jean Atkin’s third full collection ‘High Nowhere’ is newly published by IDP.  Her poetry has won competitions, been commissioned, anthologised, and featured on BBC Radio 4. She often works in collaboration with other artists, and on residencies - in October 2024 she undertakes a month’s residency in the Writers’ House in Ventspils, Latvia. Jean has also been BBC National Poetry Day Poet for Shropshire and Troubadour of the Hills for Ledbury Poetry Festival. Since 2010 she has worked as a poet in education and community. 

Matthew Stewart, reviewing 'High Nowhere' on ‘Rogue Strands‘, writes – ‘I dare you to finish reading this book and emerge indifferent to the role of humans in the plight of the Earth. That’s the mark of Atkin’s success.’

 

 

Next Buzzwords: change of guest

 

Next Buzzwords Sunday May 12th

 Our scheduled guest cannot now join us so we have Rachael Clyne instead:

 Upstairs at the Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham

Workshop lead by Rachael Clyne 7pm

Open mic and readings 8pm

Guest poet Rachael Clyne

 pay on the door, £5 waged, £3 unwaged.

 

Rachael Clyne from Glastonbury, is widely published in journals and anthologies. She has been a professional actor and a psychotherapist. Her prizewinning collection, Singing at the Bone Tree (Indigo Dreams), concerns our broken connection with nature. Her pamphlet, Girl Golem (4word.org) explores her Jewish migrant heritage. Her new collection, You’ll Never Be Anyone Else, reflects Rachael’s understanding of what it takes to reconcile otherness and expands on themes of identity to include: childhood, Jewish heritage, LGBTQ+, relationships and ageing. Rachael’s poems use a variety of forms and she treats even dark topics like domestic violence with wit and colourful imagery. A distinctive voice from someone who’s spent a life learning self-acceptance and as a psychotherapist, helping others to do similar. https://www.serenbooks.com/productdisplay/youll-never-be-anyone-else  https://rachaelclyne.blogspot.com/

 

…A potent exploration of heritage and self (and how the two are inextricably intertwined) – Julia Webb.