Workshop, led by Chrissie Gittins 7pm
Guest readings and open mic 8pm
Guest poet: Chrissie Gittins
Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham
£5 waged, £3 unwaged
CHRISSIE
GITTINS was born in Lancashire and lives in London. Her poems have won
prizes and been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Her first adult poetry collection Armature
(Arc, 2003) appeared to critical acclaim: ‘Gittins’s deadpan tone and skewed perspective mark her out as a
true original. – she has a genuine gift'. Jane Yeh, Poetry Review. Her
second adult collection is I’ll Dress One Night As You (Salt, 2009).‘Her
appealing poems reconnect a child’s wide-awake senses with an adult’s
intelligence and passion.’ Alison Brackenbury, Poetry Review
Her
three children’s poetry collections are all PBS Choices for the Children’s
Poetry Bookshelf and two were shortlisted for the CLPE Poetry Award. In 2012
Chrissie made a recording of her children’s poetry for the Poetry Archive. Her
‘New and Collected’ children’s poems ‘Stars in Jars’ will be published by
Bloomsbury in February 2014.
Chrissie’s
short story collection is Family Connections (Salt, 2007); ‘most of them
carry an insidiously discomforting charge’, Nicholas Clee, The Guardian. Her plays for BBCR4 include Starved for Love (starring Patricia Routledge),
Life Assurance (starring Sorcha
Cusack), and Dinner in the
Iguanodon.
Chrissie is a
Hawthornden Fellow; she has received two Arts Council Grants for the
Arts, and awards from the Royal
Literary Fund and the Author’s Foundation. In 2009 she was included in
the British Council Contemporary Writers directory of the UK and Commonwealth’s
'most important writers'. Chrissie was
resident writer on Shetland in September 2010, and in January 2010 she was
appointed first honorary Writer-in-Residence in Lewisham.
