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.
